Bibliophemera

Buying books in January

2012-01-11T11:04:00.000-06:00

G.F. Warfield, a Hartford, Connecticut bookseller, issued the little sales booklet above in January 1923. After several full-page ads for various books, there is a message to January book buyers:

January--a time when winds blow and snows come deep, when open fires feel cozy and an easy chair spells comfort. A "stay-at-home" month, when, with a good book as companion, one travels the fireside reading route without stirring from the home circle.

Are you one of the lucky ones who has discovered its charms? If not, take a tip from your trusted friend, the bookseller, and engage passage at once on a literary cruise that takes you the land of books. There are varied routes and a choice as to tickets, but all lead to a winter of real content and enjoyment.

G.F. Warfield was in business between 1910 and 1929, but his tenure with the bookstore was one of many booksellers that preceded and followed him. About two years ago, writing about Witkower's in Hartford, I uncovered the succession of booksellers and their various names at their establishment, which began in 1835 and ended in 1993. Among the many patrons through the doors, Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain were known to have shopped there.

Some of the books one could purchased for that "literary cruise along the fireside reading route" were depicted in the following pages:

The forecast in Austin, Texas this coming weekend does not call for snow, so readers and collectors should have no problem getting to the 2012 Austin Book, Paper & Photo Show, sponsored by the Texas Booksellers Association and Heritage Auctions. Whether you get your books from your local bookseller, a book fair, or the Internet, enjoy your January reading!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T03:28:00.000-06:00

from Bibliophemera...

...and Margaret & Nancy!

D. Lothrop & Company's children's book for Christmas 1875

2011-12-24T13:24:00.000-06:00

In 1875, Boston publisher D. Lothrop & Co. advertised a book on the envelope below, presumably in time for Christmas since they referred to it as "The Children's Book of the Season." The back side of the envelope offers additional evidence that Christmas was approaching. More on that in a minute.

The book is Wide Awake Pleasure Book, and it came out about 1875, as best as I can tell. I have come across only one bookseller claiming a first edition of this book and the year given was 1875. The address for D. Lothrop & Co. offers a clue as well.

Daniel Lothrop, according to a Wikipedia page about him, established his publishing business at the Cornhill address in Boston indicated on the above cover above in 1868. In 1874, he began publishing a magazine for children that shares the name of the book advertised on this cover. A year later, the Wikipedia article states, he needed more space and moved from his Cornhill address to another Boston location. If the dates are accurate, the Wide Awake Pleasure Book must have been one of his last published books at the Cornhill office. By the way, the Thoughts of Bibliomaven blog offers a good bit of information on D. Lothrop & Co. with wonderful images of various books and ephemera, including the latest entry--a Christmas greeting.

More points of issue for the bibliophile or collector are revealed in the envelope's ad copy, which states this book is the Largest, Most Fully Illustrated, and Handsomely Printed Volume Ever Issued in this Country at so Low a Price. Evidently, this ad is for a later printing of the original edition. The book may have been a collection of writing from the popular magazine of the magazine of the same name and was itself popular enough to go through several editions at the Cornhill offices before the company relocated just a year later.

Aside from the bibliographic content on this cover, a bit of Christmas conjecture comes to mind in the form of a seasonal sermon and perhaps the wishes of child at Christmas time.

The envelope is addressed to Rev. Henry Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury, Vermont (scratched out at some point). Turning the envelope upside-down, there is a Bible passage written in pencil below the address: And be not weary in well doing, for in due time we shall reap if we faint not (which I determined to be from St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians). Perhaps Rev. Fairbanks was drafting a few notes for a sermon--perhaps even a Christmas sermon with a message of charity and doing good deeds for others.

On the back of the envelope, in what looks to be a child's handwriting, there is an apparent address for St. Nicholas at December Holiday Harbor 74 (?), Grand Central Depot.

I've searched a number of combinations for the words above and cannot find anything related to "letters to Santa Claus" and Dec. Holiday Harbor and Grand Central Depot. So I can only wonder if Rev. Henry Fairbanks' name was scratched out by a child of his in an attempt to recycle this envelope to Santa with a Christmas wish for the book advertised on the front side. If so, I wonder if Santa heeded the Bible verse under that book ad and was not weary in his well doing Christmas Eve and put a certain book under a certain St. Johnsbury Christmas tree for a Christmas Day long ago in 1875?

Holiday Books from Jones Book Store in Los Angeles - 1909

2011-12-13T10:11:00.000-06:00

More than one hundred years ago--1909 to be exact--somebody probably enjoyed browsing new books in this holiday catalog from Jones Book Store in Los Angeles. Today, I am enjoying browsing the antiquarian selections from this now old catalog. But it is one of the best preserved old bookseller catalogs of this vintage I've run across.

Lest the catalog reader be confused by the title about what kinds of books Jones' Bookstore was selling, they were not books about Christmas, the image above being the lone title. Most books appearing in this catalog seem to deal with exotic lands around the world, travel, history, biography, and a smattering of juvenile and religious works. Popular novelists of the day were not excluded either, as evidenced by the books of Jack London, shown below (featuring Martin Eden).

Just last month, I got acquainted with Jones' Bookstore through an article by another old-time Los Angeles bookseller, Ernest Dawson, in his reminiscences of book stores that existed in the city when he arrived there in 1897. Here's what he had to say about Jones' Bookstore:

Of the second-hand booksellers of 1897, Frederick D. Jones was a picturesque and aggressive character. I recall well the big rambling place, with balconies and crowded aisles at 226-28 West First Street. It was the mecca for school books, old and new for a whole generation of Los Angeles youth.

Mr. Jones was born in South China, Maine, November 30, 1855. He seems to have been the only early Los Angeles bookseller to get a college education. He graduated from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania in June, 1882.

He came to Los Angeles from Kansas City in 1886 and January 1887 opened Jones' Bookstore at 45 South Main Street and a year later at 53 South Main Street, which was the northwest corner of Second and Main.

In 1890 he moved to 226 West First Street where his shop was a landmark for so many years.

Mr. Jones was not a rare book dealer, but was a merchandiser of all kids of secondhand books. He had large sections of religious, medical, reference, and law books, carrying some popular titles new. One of the entrances was given over to cheap books, 2 1/2c, 5c, 10c and25c shelves and sections which always made for attractive browsing.

In buying libraries I still frequently come across the deep pencil marks of Mr. Jones and the universal rubber stamp with which he "disfigured" all books he sold.

Mr. Jones carried quite a stock of stationery, manufactured his own ink, published a few books and patented and marketed a rapid addition and multiplication device. He was an Odd Fellow and was active in various Civic Organizations. He called himself an "Evolutionary Socialist."

When, in 1904 Jones' Bookstore was incorporated, several of his faithful assistants were given blocks of stocks.

Through an unfortunate law suit Mr. Jones had to sell his interest in the store. It was taken over by some of the clerks and with some additional capital moved to a larger place on Hill Street between Sixth and Seventh. Later there was a final move to Sixth Street, between Hill and Olive, where during the Depression of the Thirties it disappeared. After Mr. Jones left the business, new books and stationery were more and more emphasized and finally I bought out all that was left of the old book department, about 1930.

Pearl Harbor attack noted in 1941 bookstore calendar

2011-12-07T06:09:00.001-06:00

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.

Maher's Bookstore in Laconia, New Hampshire sold the promotional calendar (Rust Craft of Boston) below in 1941.

That year would turn out to be quite a significant year in US and world history, for on December 7th the Japanese attacked the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400, wounding another 1,100. The US declared war on Japan the next day and entered World War II. Lives and nations were changed forever by the events set in motion that day.

The person who owned this calendar filled it with birthdays of friends who were all teenagers by 1941. That young person may not have immediately appreciated how the course of history would be changed by the events of that day. The calendar entry for December 7th simply states: "Pearl Harbor."

But, space considerations aside, what else could one say that day as the shock set in about what had just happened and what the attack on America meant for all Americans and a Laconia, New Hampshire teenager in particular? Pearl Harbor.

Libraries of words have since been written about that day in 1941, and seeing two words noted in a bookstore calendar the day the attack happened speaks volumes in hindsight about what it all meant.

On a side, and personal, note, my father was born in Laconia in 1931 and 20 years later was in Japan, courtesy of Uncle Sam and the U.S. Air Force, having been shipped over during the Korean War just months after marrying my mother. No doubt, the events that transpired December 7, 1941, when he was 10 years old, played a role in his being in Japan on a US military base a decade later after the Japanese defeat in 1945 and subsequent occupation by the Americans.

A Pilgrim Bookstore in Plymouth, Massachusetts

2011-11-24T07:35:00.000-06:00

Last year, I posted to this blog about a book-related piece of ephemera with a very weak link, if you could even call it that, to the Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate today in America. It was a blotter for the Pilgrim Bookshop in Brooklyn, NY. Pilgrim was as close as I could get to Thanksgiving. Told you it was weak. I also lamented that the bookshop wasn't in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for at least then it would have some connection to the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving celebration.

This year, I have a better connection--a postcard from the Guides Pilgrim Bookstore. I knew there had to be a bookstore in Plymouth with the Pilgrim name at some point in history. It's just too obvious a choice.

The bookstore was run by publisher and bookseller, A.S. Burbank (1856-1946), and was known for its pilgrim and Plymouth souvenirs.

This postcard was made in Germany and distributed by A.C. Bosselman & Co. in New York. It is likely a Plymouth/Pilgrim souvenir postcard that Burbank stocked in his store, not a depiction of the actual bookstore.

What is depicted is an old house built in 1677 by a William Harlow, as stated on the postcard. Further, the house is referred to as "Old Fort" and that the timbers from the old fort were used to build the house. That "Old Fort" was the pilgrims' first fort built in 1621 and presumed to be the site of the first Thanksgiving feast held in the fall of that year.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !

Los Angeles Booksellers of 1897 (and their labels)

2011-11-22T11:22:00.000-06:00

Los Angeles bookseller, Ernest Dawson, wrote an article in 1947 for The Quarterly for the Historical Society of Southern California--Los Angeles Booksellers of 1897 (Volume XXIX, No. 2, June 1947). That article was reprinted that same year in the 12-page booklet below, by Saunders Press in Claremont, California.

The Saunders Press, by the way, was operated by Ruth Thomson and husband Lynne Saunders. Getting a bit off topic, researching Saunders led to this interesting article on the history of women in printing. Ruth Thomson Saunders also designed bookplates, some of which are featured in Knox College's The Art of The Book exhibit.

Back to the Los Angeles booksellers... In 1947, the author, proprietor of Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, took a look back at the bookselling scene in Los Angeles as it existed when he first arrived in that city in 1897. He states in the opening paragraphs that Los Angeles had at that time "three good new bookstores and three secondhand bookshops with creditable stocks."

Dawson's article includes whom he supposed to be the first bookseller in Los Angeles--Samuel Hellman, who opened a book and stationery store in 1862. The article then goes on to list prominent booksellers in the city: C.C. Parker, Stoll and Thayer, and Fowler Brothers (all of whom had the "good new bookstores"), and Jones' Bookstore, J.W. Smith, and Henry Ward (the secondhand booksellers). Dawson worked for the latter, Henry Ward, when he first came to Los Angeles. The photo above indicates he was still with Henry Ward in 1900.

For each bookseller, Dawson offers bits of bookseller biography and bookshop history. He provides illustration in the form of the booksellers' labels that were affixed to the endpapers of their books for advertising. These labels, referred to also as tickets, are stamp-sized pieces of paper I like to feature from time-to-time on this blog, so I was pleased to find images in this booklet of the old Los Angeles booksellers (the labels don't necessarily date to 1897), including some that did not make Dawson's "top six" and one from Dawson's own book shop, which he started in 1905.

As always, when discussing book trade labels, please see the Seven Roads Gallery of Book Trade Labels site. Color examples of some of the above are cataloged there. Also, Gabe Konrad's new site, www.booksellerlabels.com is a great source of information on the subject.

Felix Cunha and Incunabula Medica at the Roxburghe Club

2011-11-09T16:33:00.000-06:00

Here's a letterpress print announcement from Herbert Fahey for the Roxburghe Club in San Francisco in 1947.

The announcement, with an attractive border of antiquarian images of printing-related scenes, is for a presentation by Felix Cunha titled, Incunabula Medica. Cunha is described as a "Doctor of Medicine, Bibliophile, Author, Savant, Traveler."

The printer Fahey, whose name appears on the back, was active in the book arts in California, having served as president of the San Francisco Club of Printing House Craftsmen in 1929. The Book Club of California also published his book, Early Printing in California: From Its Beginning in the Mexican Territory to Statehood, September 9, 1850 (1956, printed by the Grabhorn Press). I would assume he might have also been a member of the Roxburghe Club, which was formed in 1928 in San Francisco.

What I know about Felix Cunha is pretty much what is printed on the announcement about him. As a bibliophile physician with an interest in medical books, he collected among other subjects, the work of Sir William Osler, a founding professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital. A 1987 issue of the Osler Library Newsletter confirms Dr. Cunha's interest in the writing of Dr. Osler, noting that Dr. Cunha's collection of Osleriana had been sold to the Woodward Biomedical Library at the University of British Columbia.

Osler, in turn, had an interest in the early printing history of medical books and wrote about that history in Incunabula Medica: A Study of the Earliest Printed Medical Books, 1467-1480. With that bit of information, one might wonder if Dr. Cunha was lecturing to the Roxburghe Club back in 1947 about an interest in incunabula medica that he shared with Dr. Osler, or was he talking that night about Dr. Osler's book? Regardless, it's likely that Dr. Osler's book found its way into the presentation.

Given Felix Cunha's interest in medical history subjects, it seems only natural that he would pen a few books and articles himself, a list of which can be found here.

Thanks to William R. "Bill" Holman for donating this Roxburghe Club announcement to my collection.

Bookmobile finds

2011-10-31T13:48:00.000-05:00

I'm always on the lookout for bookmobile ephemera and history. I came across both on blogs this weekend, each providing its own interactive experience for viewers who have an interest in bookmobiles and traveling libraries.

The Book Patrol blogged yesterday about a paper bookmobile model that I thought was creative and interesting--something I might forward to my younger nieces and nephew to play around with. The architect behind this clever piece of paper art is Bob Staake.

Of course, I had to try it for myself. It looked easy enough. Just print out the design on Staake's site and start cutting.

Easy, it is not. It's been too many decades since I played with scissors and paper. After about a minute, I grew tired of the exercise. But I managed to complete the obstacle course of tabs and tires without snipping off anything essential.

The next challenge presented itself in short order: Fold and tuck the tabs and glue the whole thing together. Again, easier said than done.

I didn't have the glue, so my "finished" product looks like something headed for the automobile junk yard.

Or road kill.

And here's what it should look like, according to the image below from Staake's Web site:

Another interesting find over the weekend was from the Exile Bibliophile, reporting on an idle bookmobile that functions as a model, of sorts, for traveling library history. It's an old rail car that transported books to readers in Montana timber camps in the early 20th century. Read about this fascinating historical exhibit, its current restoration status, and where to visit. From the photos, it appears visitors can interact with this railway bookmobile, too, by simply walking into the rail car and stepping back in time. You won't need to cut, fold, tuck, or glue anything.

Little, Brown and Company, Birchall's Bookstore, and Abe Lincoln (maybe...)

2011-10-21T16:28:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting, via email, Laurel Davis, the Legal Information Librarian, Lecturer in Law, and Curator of Special Collections for the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room in the Boston College Law Library. Somewhere in all that she also finds time to write the Rare Book Room's blog.

She was working on an exhibit of early Massachusetts law books and found a Bibliophemera post about Little, Brown & Company that featured an 1892 billhead and some information that seemed a good fit for the exhibit.

I was delighted to have her use it for The Golden Age of Legal Publishing in Massachusetts. I was actually in Massachusetts earlier this month, but on the western side of the state and just didn't have the time to see the exhibit in person. But there is the digital counterpart for those of us who can't travel to see this interesting collection of early Massachusetts law books.

During our correspondence, I indicated I might have more examples of related ephemera and set about finding for her any additional Little, Brown & Company or other Massachusetts law book publishers that might be in my collection. I had no luck, though I knew there was something.

I took another look recently and found what I was looking for--an even earlier billhead that had been archived in its original folded manner (that's how I missed the content before), as it had been mailed that way and contained the address of the recipient, a postage stamp, and evidence of the sender's wax seal.

I thought I would include it here as a follow-up to the previous Little, Brown & Company post, with some added history for the customer on the billhead, and also alert readers to the Boston College Law Library exhibit. It's a good one.

This is the only example I know of in my collection of a billhead or other business transaction paper being turned into its own mailer.

This billhead appears to be dated 1856, which precedes my other Little, Brown & Company billhead by nearly forty years. The three principals in the company include Charles C. Little, whose name was absent on the 1892 billhead. The other partners' names, Brown and Flagg, are also on the 1892 billhead, but those names belong to their sons who succeeded them in the business.

Also of interest with this billhead is the customer, Caleb Birchall of Springfield, Illinois. I thought of a lawyer in Springfield who might have had need for some law books from Little, Brown and Company. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Caleb Birchall was a printer and bookbinder who moved to Springfield from Philadelphia in 1834 and became a respected businessman in the community. In 1848, he either entered into a new business, or expanded on his existing business. Surviving business documents indicate that 1848 was the year he partnered with druggist Thomas Jefferson Vance Owen to operate what became a very successful business selling a variety of items in addition to drugs and patent medicines of the day. They also printed and distributed a farmer's almanac, so it appears that Birchall didn't relinquish all of his printing business.

That Birchall was ordering books form a Boston law book publisher in the 1856 would indicate he engaged in bookselling also at the time of this billhead. Lincoln was known to have been a customer of the firm, having bought ledgers from them. Might he have also acquired a few law books as well from Birchall?

There is more documentation about Birchall's having been a bookseller in Springfield during the time Lincoln lived there. Allen Guelzo's Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President and The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume I. both refer to Birchall's bookstore in Springfield. Guelzo's reference includes a passage about the bookstore having operated a circulating library where one could find books by Scott, Cooper, Irving, and others. Coincidentally, the billhead to Birchall includes a note advising him that his request for books by Cooper and Irving could best be handled by a New York publisher.

However, Little, Brown & Company was able to furnish the following books, the variety of which belies somewhat the "Law Booksellers & Publishers" that appears on their correspondence: Locke's Human Understanding, Bancroft (US History?), British Poets, and English Law and Equal Rights.

So Birchall was stocking literature, philosophy, and history for Springfield readers as well as law books for Springfield lawyers. Makes you wonder if Lincoln ever strolled into the shop and bought a law book or two that just might have come from Little, Brown & Company. Now that would be a billhead to have and write about!

The North Texas Book & Paper Show

2011-10-14T10:35:00.002-05:00

The Texas Booksellers Association and Heritage Auctions are sponsoring the 2011 North Texas Book & Paper Show this weekend, October 15-16. Check it out if you're in the area.

Click on the image on above for an enlarged view.

Ticknor, Payot, Upham--Books from Boston to San Francisco

2011-09-06T03:00:00.000-05:00

This was a tough one to title because of the two companies indicated on the 1887 postal cover: Ticknor and Company of Boston, Publishers, and Payot, Upham & Co. of San Francisco, Booksellers. Each was important to the book trades on their respective coasts, each was important to the other, and each could have been featured in a separate post.

I've written previously about Ticknor and its various business incarnations through the 19th century and beyond, so more attention will be given here to Payot, Upham & Company. However, for anyone interested in Ticknor history, here's a similar cover I wrote about last year, in which some company history is outlined. The covers are quite similar with minor differences in the Ticknor logos.

Until 1870, the San Francisco bookselling firm, Henry Payot & Co. dealt primarily in foreign language books from European countries, particularly France. That is undoubtedly owed to the fact that founder Henry Payot was born to French parents.

Born in 1838 in South Carolina, Payot came to California at age 13 with his parents during the Gold Rush days. He later worked for lithographers Quirot & Company before starting Henry Payot & Co. and focusing on bookselling and publishing. His company would grow and change noticeably for the better when a young publishing agent, Isaac Upham, would join the firm.

As Payot's business focused on books from around the world, primarily Europe, that interest ultimately led to several trips abroad, including Japan, where he lectured in 1907. He had lectured before on Egypt, as reported in the San Jose News in 1901, perhaps from his own travel there. He died in 1921.

Source

Isaac Upham had been in California since 1860, a transcontinental-transplant from Maine. He taught and served as superintendent for Butte County and Yuba County schools before landing in San Francisco as an agent for the Cincinnati publisher, Wilson, Hinkle & Co.

Just a year later, Upham was in a position to buy a half-interest in Henry Payot's company. His business expertise, particularly with the publishing company, seems to have paid quick dividends. Within five years, the firm of Payot, Upham & Co. began dealing in English language books as well as selling stationery, increased their business significantly, and relocated its headquarters in San Francisco from 622 Washington Street to 204 Sansome Street.

The result of these business decisions, with Upham's guidance, positioned Payot, Upham & Co., as one of the largest of wholesale and importing stationery and bookselling firms on the entire Pacific coast.

Upham's business acumen extended to other areas, including banking. His book and stationery business continued to prosper and before the first decade was done in the new century, Payot, Upham & Co. was succeeded by The Isaac Upham Company, incorporating in 1909 (The Bookseller, newsdealer, and stationer, Vol. 30, 1909).

Unfortunately, Upham wouldn't live much longer to see the company prosper under its new name. In July of 1909, he was riding his bicycle in San Jose and was killed in a collision with an automobile.

The newspaper article shown at the left is from the San Francisco Call, July 22, 1909, and reports on the settlement of Upham's estate and refers to his death.

From his early horse and carriage days on the West coast during the Civil War era, the circumstances of his demise could not have been foretold without a suspension of disbelief in extreme fantasy. Such were the times the span of his years traversed.

A letter from Tiffany Thayer of the Fortean Society

2011-09-05T03:45:00.000-05:00

Charles Hoy Fort was a writer who, after several failed novels, finally found his audience with a nonfiction book titled The Book of the Damned (Horace Liveright, 1919), which is regarded as the first book to deal with the field of anomalistics, or paranormal phenomena.

Fort and his writing attracted some very influential literary pals, such as Theodore Dreiser, an old friend who was instrumental in getting Fort's work published. Many others admired his writing and became founding members in a society dedicated to Fort and his works--the appropriately named Fortean Society. Writer Tiffany Thayer started the society. Dreiser served as the first president and they were joined in membership by notable literary figures such as Ben Hecht, Alexander Woolcott, Booth Tarkington, Dorothy Parker, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and H. L. Mencken. Ironically, Fort shunned the notion of such a society and refused to participate beyond the first meeting, in which he was lured to under false pretenses. The Fortean Society continues to this day as The International Fortean Organization (INFO).

That bit of information sets the stage for another installment from Schulte's Book Store letter archive in my collection. This one is from Tiffany Thayer, who actually founded the Fortean Society to celebrate the publication of Fort's popular Lo! (Claude Kendall, 1931), which Thayer had helped get published. Doug Skinner wrote of this and much more on Thayer in an excellent article for the Fortean Times (June 2005).

Tiffany Thayer bought books from Schulte's Book Store in New York City and felt compelled on one occasion to add a note with his next order, after having received a parcel and noticing a potential problem for the bookseller's mailing practices:

In comradely, bookmanly spirit, may I call your attention to a postal law of which you may never have heard. It is to the effect that "bills", "statements" and "duns" are not admissable to the mails on postcards....I, personally took no offense, but I mention this because someone might make trouble for you. Ask your attorney. The law is about 20 years old, I think.

The Fortean Society letterhead that Thayer used provides some nice history for the organization. The left column offers a list of members who have passed on to "the next world," against an artistic backdrop of stars and planets. The list of deceased members is an impressive one: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Linclon Steffens, Clarence Darrow, Havelock Ellis, Harry Leon Wilson, and Felix Riesenberg.

In the lower-right corner of the letter is the founding date (1931) for the society and a list of names that I assume was the founding board, including Tiffany Thayer as Secretary. Again, an impressive list of names from the literati of the day: Ben Hecht, Booth Tarkington, Burton Rascoe, John Cowper Powys, Alexander Woollcott, J. David Stern, Harry Leon Wilson, Aaron Sussman. What is interesting is the absence of a key founder--Theodore Dreiser, the society's first president no less.

The Wikipedia page for the Fortean Society indicates that Tiffany Thayer became very controlling of the society's direction as well as its newsletter, which he used for his own views. As he drifted from the the original intent of the society, perhaps he and Dreiser got crossways with each other. Thayer reportedly kicked out an entire chapter (San Francisco) from society membership over a disagreement.

I did learn from Doug Skinner's article, referenced above, that founding member Alexander Woollcott, who had social ties with President Roosevelt, may have quit the society that year because of a Fortean Society newsletter article penned by Thayer, February 1942, that accused the president of colluding with Japan. But Woollcott's name was still on the letterhead featured in this post, by September 1942.

Perhaps Dreiser's split from the group, if he did indeed leave, was not as amicable a departure as that of Woollcott's. Dreiser did have a beef with Thayer, however minor, about some of Charles Fort's notes, as indicated in the archives at The University of Virginia. In A Guide to the Papers of the Fortean Society, 1927-1952, a letter from Dreiser to Arthur Leonard Ross (A.L.R.) indicates trouble between Dreiser and Thayer, as noted in the collection guide:

Theodore Dreiser to A. L. R. 1937 Jun 26 TLS. 1 p. Will not take action against Tiffany Thayer, former secretary of the Fortean Society. Says that Thayer has some notes of C. F.'s that should be in a publicly accessible collection, e. g. the New York Public Library. Mentions Ben Hecht and [David] Stern (owner of the N. Y. Post.) Dreiser mentions that he was denied access to the notes.

There are other letters in the collection that point to trouble between Thayer and society members, as well as Charles Fort's widow, who sued Thayer for her late husband's notes.

Alexander Woollcott to A. L. R. 1937 Jul 4 TLS. 1 p. Lent his name to the Fortean Society, thought its purpose was to call attention to Fort's book. Mentions that Mrs. Fort is suing Tiffany Thayer for the return of Charles Fort's notes.

Back to the letter that's the subject of this post, Thayer seemed to have a good relationship with his bookseller, Schulte, and didn't want to see him in trouble over misuse of the US Postal System. And so, in "comradely, bookmanly spirit," he let Schulte know about the errors of his ways in using postcards inappropriately.

I, for one, am grateful that Thayer was thoughtful enough to enlighten Schulte and that Schulte kept his correspondence and that other collectors and dealers down through the years have preserved this letter because I now get to enjoy it in my collection and learn about a society, its literary members and beginning, and its namesake who wanted nothing to do with it.

An Allentown bookseller's cup of tea

2011-08-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Carrying on with the theme of the previous post (die-cut trade cards for booksellers), here is a trade card for an Allentown, Pennsylvania (nod to Antiquarian Holographica) bookseller--Shafer's New Bible House, which sold Bibles, of course, but also a wide variety of books, as well as albums and stationery.

The cup-and-saucer shape of this trade card is an interesting choice for a bookseller. I wonder why not a book, as used quite effectively by a bookseller featured in the previous post about a Cooperstown bookseller? It may have had some metaphorical meaning to the shop owner or it may have just been eye-catching and readily available, or even one of a variety of cards used by the proprietor. Or maybe it was just his cup of tea or that of certain customers for whom he reserved this special card. Then again, most Victorian-era trade cards I've seen for booksellers and other businesses sport images that have nothing to do with the businesses they represent.

Mr. Shafer got a fine write-up in the 1881 publication, Manufacturing and mercantile resources of the Lehigh Valley, including historical sketches of the prominent towns: A descriptive, industrial and statistical review. Progress. Enterprise. Development. (Industrial Publications Company of Philadelphia). His business on North 7th Street was viewed as one of the best of its kind in Allentown. As a native of that city, Shafer knew his fellow citizens and he knew books. Though he specialized in Bibles and Testaments, he strove for a variety of miscellaneous books, among other items, that would provide the most beneficial reading for his community.

He appears to have used his own imprint and improved bindings on some of the books he purchased. The latter would explain why the American Bookbinders Museum site displays a Shafer's ticket, though bookbinder is not specifically indicated on the ticket. It could very well have been the bookseller's label. I was hoping to find another example at the great Seven Roads Gallery, but no luck there.

From the publication referenced above, in the styled prose of the era, here is the complete description of Shafer's business, for which a knowledge of books and customers and dedication to both were the ultimate cup of tea for this bookseller:

SHAFER'S NEW BIBLE HOUSE,

J. Alfred Shafer, Prop., 134 North Seventh Street.

Establishments of this kind, well stocked with the latest publications, are not confined to the great cities, but will be found in every city and town, thus evidencing the intelligence of the community and at the same time furnishing the rising generation with facilities for extending their store of knowledge.

One of the leading stores in Allentown in this department of trade, and one that has a reputation peculiarly its own, is that known as Shafer's New Bible House. He occupies a desirable store, and carries an extensive, stock of Bibles and Testaments, of which goods he makes a specialty, and also carries a complete line of Miscellaneous Books, Albums, Stationery, etc. No establishment in the city has any finer variety or a stock more extended in its subjects.

He deals extensively in the latest standard works, many of those which he sells with his own imprint upon them, and in many respects much improved by handsome binding that is placed on them by his direction. Persons desirous of securing Standard and Miscellaneous Books, will find at this house a variety worthy their attention.

Mr. Shafer is a native of Allentown, and not only thoroughly understands the book trade, but has done much to promote the circulation of useful and beneficial reading in this community.

His establishment presents a scene of busy activity, and the proprietor is fast pushing his way to the very front rank in the business.

Mischief in a Cooperstown book shop

2011-08-06T16:47:00.000-05:00

Revisiting Cooperstown (see Delos M. Wood, Cooperstown Bookseller), here is an elaborately designed trade card for another Victorian-era, Cooperstown bookseller: S.J.W. Reynolds.

The die-cut card conveys an image, rich in colorful, busy detail, appropriately in the shape of a book. The binding provides the business vitals, while the cover invokes an imaginative scene of mischievous elves at play while the owner's away (actually, he's just returned and caught them in the act). This scene also provides more opportunity for advertising some of the shop's products for sale--writing instruments, ink, periodicals, and assorted categories of books.

I can date this to the 1880s or 1890s. I have found copies of Phinney's Calendar, or Western Almanac, 1885-1886, that show Reynolds as the publisher. So add that to this bookseller's resume. Also in 1890, a sales ad in a volume of Publisher's Weekly for Reynolds' bound collection of a full run of Century Magazine and a Cooperstown map that lists Reynolds' business.

By 1902, Reynolds can be found as a County Clerk for Fulton County (home to Cooperstown), but I don't know if that means he got out of the bookselling business. The trail goes cold here.

On a related ephemera note, the lithography for this card was done by the firm Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann of New York. Dick Sheaff has their trade card on his excellent ephemera site (one of the best!) Sheaff : ephemera, a visual feast of vintage paper.

A Nun's Reading Habit

2011-08-01T23:51:00.000-05:00

I have here a series of old monthly statements from various publishers and booksellers, 1906-1908, that involve book orders by a Sister Mary Ursula of St. Mary's Academy and Sacred Heart Academy (Gray Nuns) of Ogdensburg, New York.

To say, as the title of this post suggests, that this small collection of business correspondence reflects Sister Mary Ursula's reading habit is probably inaccurate (but I couldn't resist the play on words!).

However, these statements do reflect that she did buy books and other items from, appropriately enough, Christian, Catholic,and educational publishers. Sister Mary Ursula was likely influential in the reading curriculum of her students at St. Mary's Academy, so it may have been their reading habits she was cultivating through her purchase with these companies.

Of the six statements below, only one actually indicates the books ordered. From Carey-Stafford Co., Publishers, Booksellers and Importers in New York City, Sister Mary Ursula ordered one 4-volume set of Apparitions. This single copy indicates an acquisition for a library.

Jan 1 1906 H.L Kilner & Co Catholic Publishers & Manufactuers of Vestments & Catholic goods 824 Arch St. Philadelphia

July 1 1908 Houghton Mifflin & Co Boston Mass
October 1 1908 H.L Kilner & Co Catholic Publishers & Manufacturers of Vestments & Catholic goods 824 Arch St. Philadelphia

Oct 23 1908 Librairie J A Jacques 94 Mechanic Street, Worchester MA

Jan 2 1908 Prang Educational Company 113 University Place NY NY (auditors request for balance due)

Eureka Bazaar, San Francisco

2011-07-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

I usually write about a piece I've researched and can provide some history on, but this one is a stumper. Maybe someone out there will see this and have some information about it.

This is an old trade card for a San Francisco bookseller and stationer, E.C. Thatcher and his business with the colorful name, Eureka Bazaar.

Looks like he sold a hodge-podge of items, not just books and stationery. With the shop name, proprietor's name, the address on Mission Street, you'd think I could turn up something on the Internet. Actually, I did get the following, which answers nothing and only creates more questions

An 1888-89 Northern Pacific Coast Directory has this entry for Eureka Bazar (sic) at a different address in San Francisco (I presume, as the street address exists there today) with a different owner, a woman referred to as Mrs. Douglas:

DOUGLAS MRS E A
proprietress Eureka Bazar
1841 Fillmore
res same

Using all this information has produced not one iota of a clue about this old San Francisco bookseller, whose card I would date about 1880s. But perhaps the "C" in E.C. Thatcher stands for "Carter" and E.C. is the ancestor of the Carter Thatcher in San Francisco for whom the University of San Francisco Thatcher Gallery was named. Maybe... Just maybe...

I also hoped Janvier, noticeably displayed on the front of the card, might give me something to write about, but this apparently is the month of January, not an artist's name.

So from front to back, this trade card is one big mystery. No Eureka! moments yet.

The Tides Book Shop in Sausalitio

2011-07-18T10:45:00.006-05:00

On this date 46 years ago, July 18, 1965, a fire broke out in the building that housed the Tides Book Shop in Sausalito, California. The Associated Press wire photo below shows firefighters battling the upper-story blaze above the book shop, which resided below on the first floor. A crowd gathered to watch.

The newspaper clipping on the backside of the photo offers some assurance that the book shop did not burn, but it could not escape water damage from the firefighters' efforts to save the building. How much damage occurred is uncertain from the information available at present.

I acquired this photo to go along with another item I have from the Tides Book Shop. I certainly hope this is the only link the two have and that the shop's matches (not these) weren't in anyway implicated with the fire. That would have been too ironic a twist of fate!

There's a good bit of history on The Tides, as it was known, in a local newspaper article reproduced and edited by Doris Berdahl: Sausalito Historical Society: The Tides. The author is unknown, but the article observes a change in ownership of the Tides and reflects on the shop's past, beginning with the day they opened for business on July 31, 1957.

Sally Brown Deskins, in a Prairie Schooner blog post, references her grandfather, William H. Ryan, who, with co-founder Herb Beckman, started the Tides in 1957. The next year, Ryan was busy at work editing the new literary quarterly, Contact, which quickly became an important, avant garde magazine that was critically acclaimed. According to the Sausalito Historical Society article above, he set up his office upstairs above the book shop. It was short-lived, though, ending its run in 1962 after the publishers ran out of funds to keep it going.

However they did nurture the Tides and keep it going through the 1960s to 1972 when it was sold. The name stayed the same, but the shop changed to suit the new owners' philosophy of what a book shop should be.

Later in the decade, it would change hands again and this time the name changed with it to Upstart Crow and Co., which evolved into a nine-store chain at one point, based out of Berkeley. A 1987 Los Angeles Times article (Mary Galante, June 23) reports the chain was reduced to a single store by that time and it was nowhere near Sausalito. San Diego's Seaport Village was clinging to the remnants of a lineal descendant of the Tides. The trail goes cold at this point and I can only assume that the book shop succumbed to the dominance of big chain bookstores by the 1990s.

But the spirit, so to speak, of the original Tides lives on in another California town north of Sausalito--Mill Valley.

Mary Beckman, wife of the Tides co-founder Herb Beckman, became the book shop's first employee, stayed with into the 1970s, and seems to have been involved with books in one capacity or another ever since, according to a reprint of the October 16-22, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

After a divorce, she moved on (Herb kept the Tides), working for other booksellers, remarried, and in 1987 started the Depot Bookstore in Mill Valley with her husband Bill Turnbull (co-founder of North Point Press). The Depot Bookstore was featured in the book, The Art of the Bookstore: The Bookstore Paintings of Gibbs M. Smith.

As an important literary and cultural center for the area, and on the periphery of San Francisco and its iconic status from the Beat Generation of the 1950s through the 1960s counterculture and beyond, it's likely a good number of artists from those eras wandered in and out of the Tides. But at least one literary icon, I've learned, actually worked there. Raymond Carver.

In Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography, by Sam Halpert (University of Iowa Press, 1995), Halpert writes that Ray Carver, broke and desperate for money, as well as in the throes of alcoholism, took a job at the Tides in Sausalito. It only lasted two weeks. During that time, he spent his earnings on books he found at the store.

The original owners of the Tides were likely gone by the time Ray Carver showed up looking for work. But the bookselling learned and cultivated at the Tides Book Shop a half-century ago, emerged like a Phoenix from literal fire and the figurative fires of changing times and tastes, as well as fierce competition from the big chain booksellers and the Internet. It continues to adapt and thrive in Mill Valley, up the road a ways.

Miss Dana's Spelling-Books Lecture

2011-07-16T14:43:00.006-05:00

Horace Mann gave the lecture. Miss Dana received this printed pamphlet of the lecture:

Lecture on the Best Mode of Preparing and Using Spelling-Books, Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruction, August 1841, by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Board of Education (Massachusetts), was published by William D. Ticknor in Boston, 1841. Here is what I have deduced from the printed copy at hand (and a little Internet research):

Sometime during the following year, 1842, Miss Joanna E. Dana was preparing to teach school in West Dedham, Massachusetts's. A friend or colleague sent her a printed copy of this lecture to help her with her spelling instruction.

Miss Dana evidently read the lecture and, being the literary person and teacher that she was, corrected an error she found in Mr. Mann's discourse. On page 20, in the paragraph that contains "the knotted cords of the Mexicans," Miss Dana crossed out "Mexic" and wrote next to it in the margin "Peruvi."

Being the editor I am, I checked Miss Dana's editing and sure enough she was absolutely correct about Peruvian knotted cords. And I am sticking to the assumption that she was indeed the editor of that passage, and not the person who gave her the pamphlet, as the ink color differs from that in the presentation on the inside cover.

How I deduced the above scenario is thanks to the "power" of the Internet and Google books. I was able to quickly find in the Dedham Historical Register a Miss Joanna E. Dana in West Dedham, who taught school there in 1842:

In 1842 Miss Joanna E. Dana instructed the West Dedham School twenty-two weeks. She was the daughter of Lemuel and Hannah (Eames) Dana, born in 1822, and was educated in the Westfield School when the higher branches were taught there to such an extent as to make it almost equal to an academy. She was married to Mr. John Mills of Needham, May 24, 1862. Mrs. Mills was a person of considerable literary enterprise, and wrote a volume of " Memories and Poems, " which was published in 1881. A few years before her death in 1893, she expressed to me the intention of writing some reminiscences of the West- field School. Had she done so, the record would have been valu- able and especially interesting to those who enjoyed its privileges.

The timing is right and I am confident this is the same Miss Dana who owned this pamphlet. That she became Mrs. Mills later is quite a coincidence for me, as I was instantly reminded of Miss Mills, my beloved second grade teacher.

Regarding my Miss Mills, I learned sometime back that she lived just a few miles from where I presently reside. I was thrilled to think I might run into her again after forty-something years. When that didn't happen, I wrote her a letter that included memories of my first creative writings, her praise and encouragement (that means a lot to an eight-year-old!), and first books I checked out of the library in her class (I have copies of them now in my collection). I mentioned I hoped to see her again and that got me an invitation to her home because, sadly, she was gravely ill and confined there. But she was gracious enough to visit with me, a stranger really, for about 10 or 15 minutes. And now I have another memory of Miss Mills (who ceased being Miss Mills long ago, but will always be remembered that way by me).

I've had Miss Dana's pamphlet in my collection for the better part of a year, I'd guess, and just stumbled across it again this morning. I couldn't remember why exactly I had bought it, but started digging and Miss Dana became Mrs. Mills and reminded me of my own early education and my favorite teacher, Miss Mills.

Miss Dana seemed a diligent teacher interested in learning better ways to teach. The passage about her "literary enterprise" is bolstered by a couple of books I found that she wrote:

Remembrance of My Mother and Some of My Own Poems, by Joanna Mills (A. Williams & Co., Boston, 1881)

Old and New and Other Poems, by Joanna E. Mills (Columbian Printing Co., Boston, 1893)

She apparently taught at West Dedham for just 22 weeks. I wonder if during that time, she benefited from the ideas in Horace Mann's lecture. And I wonder if she made a significant impression on a young mind, creating a lasting memory in the manner a special teacher influenced me long ago.

Dedicated to "Miss Mills" and all the wonderful teachers past and present (including my mom, of course, who also taught second grade) who inspired and continue to inspire their young students and create within them a foundation for continued learning and development throughout their lives. We owe them so much.

Buchhändlerbörse - The Leipzig Booksellers Exchange

2011-07-15T08:28:00.002-05:00

A while back, I wrote about Leipzig booksellers and touched on the role agents, or commissioners, played as middlemen between the booksellers and publishers in that city as well as most of Europe.

I recently acquired a postcard that depicts the place where these middlemen conducted their business. This is an image of the Buchhändlerbörse in Leipzig, circa 1910, which translates to The Booksellers' Exchange.

The back is divided and blank. A bookseller's handwritten note certainly would have enhanced the history depicted on the front side.

But the history is rich enough with the associated image of the Buchhändlerbörse on the front of the card. The German Publishers & Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) offers on their Web site a history of their organization and mentions the Buchhändlerbörse, which seems more commonly spelled today with two words--Buchhändler-Börse.

The Buchhändlerbörse dates back to 1825. Heimsprudler's Gallery has an image of the building shown on the postcard under construction, circa 1888, on land donated by the city. From what I can gather, the building was apparently destroyed during World War II.The site is now occupied by a building of guest flats.

But what exactly was a Buchhändlerbörse, or booksellers' exchange? A chapter in the book, The Bookworm: An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature, Volume 5 (1892), adds to what I wrote about earlier and explains how a book got from an author to a reader and the need for a middelman, or commissioner, and, thus, the need for the Buchhändlerbörse:

The German book trade is divided into threebranches—publishing, bookselling (which includes second-hand dealing), andcommission business. Publishers are those who furnish the book, i.e., whoobtain it from the author and cause it to be printed and circulated.Booksellers are those who sell to the public, and the "commissioner"is a sort of middleman who connects publishers and booksellers. Let us imaginethat fifty books are ordered daily at a bookseller's, all of which arepublished by different firms. If the bookseller were in direct communicationwith the publishers he would daily have to write fifty letters, to pay theirpostage, to pay for the packet, and to despatch fifty remittances. This wouldnecessitate labour and costs quite out of proportion to the trifling gain oneach order. Now, since the greater portion of the German publishers reside at Leipzig, thecustom has become instituted in the course of time that the intercourse betweenpublishers and booksellers is conducted via Leipzig. Thebookseller from whom a book is ordered writes the title and publisher upon asmall memorandum, and sends this, together with a large number of similarlittle pieces of paper, to his commissioner in Leipzig. Thelatter, in his turn, distributes the memoranda to the commissioners of therespective publishers. The commissioners of the publishers send the memorandato their respective firms, who then pack the books ordered and send them totheir commissioners, who distribute them to the booksellers' commissioners,through whom they are finally sent in bales to the booksellers. If a booksellerwishes to pay a publisher on ordering a book, he requests his commissioner topay the money to the commissioner of the publisher. As a rule, books are notpaid for in cash, but during the fair that takes place at Easter. At thisperiod, books that have not been sold are also returned by the booksellers tothe publishers. Both the money and the returned goods go first to thebookseller's commissioner, and then, by the same process as the memoranda, findtheir way to the publishers.

So the Booksellers' Exchange was the place where commissioners worked on behalf of publishers and booksellers to take orders from booksellers and acquire books from publishers to fill those orders.

For an update on how business is conducted now between publishers and booksellers, I refer you back to the informative site of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association – Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.

One last note on the postcard... It was published by Louis Glaser (1881-1915) of Leipzig. From the brief bio found at the link above:

A printer of souvenir books and postcards. He is best known for the Glaser Process in which a rich monochrome image could be produced by using at least five different litho stones, not for different colors but for different tonalities. This process was shared with the printer Charles Frey of Frankfort, Germany. He produced many other postcards as tinted halftones.

Polish ex libris

2011-07-09T08:45:00.001-05:00

I haven't featured a bookplate, or ex libris, here in a good while, but here's one for which I have more questions than information to share.

Henryka Raczyniewskiego was either a noteworthy Polish collector of ex libris or a collectible illustrator of ex libris. His collection, of which category I'm not certain, resides now in the Nicolaus Copernicus University Library's new Digital Library in Toruń, Poland: Kujawsko-Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa. From the information presented, I can't answer the collector/illustrator question.

The library's collections available thus far seem an impressive start for assembling ephemera representative of Polish culture and history, including the ex libris collection where I found the scant bit of information available on Raczyniewskiego. Presently, that's all the information I can find about him. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will have additional information to share.

As to whether he was a collector or an illustrator, I think he just may have been both.

That he may have collected books is evident by a recent find in my backlog of books--the 1922 book, Nurnberg, by Paul Johannes Ree (E.A. Seeman, Leipzig). And partially affixed to the heavily foxed front free endpaper, I found Henryka Raczyniewskiego's own ex libris, as shown at the beginning of this post.

Did Raczyniewskiego the illustrator (and perhaps collector) design his own ex libris or was it designed for Raczyniewskiego the collector by another illustrator?

Delos M. Wood, Cooperstown bookseller

2011-06-25T17:57:00.001-05:00

Today, in Cooperstown, New York, the 17th Annual Cooperstown Antiquarian Book Fair is underway.

Recently, I wrote about a Cooperstown bookseller's trade card on another blog, but had copied it from my original post on this blog from a few years back. Somewhere and somehow in the process of transferring that information, I deleted the original source from this blog. So I'll take this opportunity, on the day of the book fair in that beautiful little village, to repost the piece about the card.

I have a trade card for an old bookseller who had just purchased his partner's interest in a Cooperstown book shop, circa 1880s, and sent this card around to introduce the name change from Cockett & Wood to Delos M. Wood, Bookseller and Stationer.

I haven't found much of anything else to report on Mr. Wood or his business, but the card was too nice a specimen from a place I love to visit to not include it in this blog.

The book trade is still going strong there as well as that other game in town—baseball. Whether baseball was invented there or not, as one version has it, the game has been integral to this community for some seventy years with the Baseball Hall of Fame there. And I would suspect book shops have always played a role in the area’s culture.

I was last there about four years ago and found two shops in town and more in the surrounding area. I only had time to visit Willis Monie’s shop and I could have camped out there all day. Much to see. As with the Baseball Hall of Fame. As with the whole area.

The back of the Delos M. Wood's card

A bookseller's battle with Wall Street

2011-06-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

Location, location, location.

The old adage for a key to a business’ successapparently came into play for bookseller W.I. Whiting in New York during the 1890s. He thought if he hitched hiswagon to the wealthy Wall Streeters, he’d make a killing himself with his impressive inventory of a quarter-million books. That was not to be. Not evenclose.

It's always fun to find a piece of ephemera for a business whose proprietorshares my surname. Even more so when the proprietor is a bookseller. And the possibility that I might be remotely related to him is intriguing. I hope so, for he appears to have been quite the character and would make an interesting addition to my genealogy.

William Ivan Whiting had trouble getting his banking neighbors to come by his shop and buybooks. Seems they’d rather hit the 400 bars in the area instead. His book shop near Wall Street had trouble selling two books a day to thatcrowd. Two sales against a quarter million books makes for a pathetic ratio. SoWhiting got angry and it earned him the nickname, Bibliooddio. Odd perhaps, butcolorful definitely!

For seven years, he hung his shingle at 7 Beaver Street. When he decided the location was hopeless,he moved the business to the address indicated in the ad piece above (complete with another trademark bit of verse). But he couldn't leave without a printed slap-in-the-face to his neighbors. Inthe October10, 1896 issue of Publisher's Weekly, Whiting wrote the following about his book shop's demise, while indicting the character of his neighbors:

THE FACT THAT A 250,000 VOL.BOOK-STORE cannot live where 400 liquor saloons thrive is a disgrace to theimperial city of New York.

The entire Publisher’s Weekly article about Whiting follows at the end of this post.

Whiting's anger could not be assuaged with a one-sentence volley lobbed at Wall Street. He penned an ode to his losing battle with the 400 saloons and liquor establishments as well, which he saw as his evil competitors for the Wall Street business: Four Hundred to One; or, Pegasus to Purgatory via Wall St. Abattoir (written December 1895, self-published).

The Preface gets you warmed up for the Prologue, which sets the tone for what is to follow in a 23-page rambling bit of poetic (self) indulgence at the expense of his wealthy, bookless (his opinion) would-be patrons. Bitter about his experiences near Wall Street.? Yeah, I'd say so.

I'd be curious to know how he fared at his new address and, if that didn't work for him, whom he might have blamed and what he might have written about them. One thing for certain--he would not have kept quiet about it.

The 1896 Publisher's Weekly article about W.I. Whiting's troubles and attack on his neighbors:

OCTOBER 10, 1896.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A PROPER LOCATION FOR A BOOK-STORE. W. I. Whiting, who is what Mr. Ruggles, of Bronson, Mich., calls a " bibliooddio," has made up his mind to close his book-cellar in Beaver Street, New York, and has fired a parting shot at his neighbors in the shape of the following advertisement in the Mail and Express:

THE FACT THAT A 250,000 VOL. BOOK-STORE cannot live where 400 liquor saloons thrive is a disgrace to the imperial city of New York.

W. I. WHITING, 7 Beaver St.

For seven years Mr. Whiting has fought an unequal battle, as he thinks, against the ignorance of and indifference to literature of the bankers and brokers by whose offices his book cellar is surrounded, and against the influence of the 400 liquor saloons which turn into their tills the dollars which he thinks of right should belong to him.

"In the imperial city of the West, here in Wall Street where the brains of the country are supposed to be gathered for the nation's welfare," Mr. Whiting complains, he can't sell two books a day at any price. They won't even " buy a picture-book to take home to their children." And as for Mr. Whiting's own poem, " Four Hundred to One," it might have been still-born for all the bankers and brokers seem to care for it. What they do want, and what they seem to get in plenty, according to Mr. Whiting, is rum-shops.

And so Mr. Whiting is about to withdraw the only civilizing influence from that neighborhood, and after the first of May next the bankers and brokers will not be able to get any of his quarter of a million books. He does not say whether he will go higher up-town and give the men who now slight him another chance to redeem themselves in his opinion.

This would be his only hope for retrieving the losses he has sustained during his seven years' vigil on the steps of the down-town cellar. He has learned to his sorrow that his neighbors have no time during the stay south of Wall Street for anything but business, and the imbibing of stimulus to keep up the mad rush after the almighty dollar. These same men, however, when their stint of work is done, become men of leisure, and on their way uptown are apt to drop into the book-shops for prizes or bargains. Mr. Whiting made a mistake when he thought he could catch the dollars of these men where they make them, forgetting that in their money-making haunts they are close as new steel traps, while away from them they become reasonable and tolerably liberal buyers.

We give prominence to Mr. Whiting's dilemma because it illustrates a mistake made by many of his colleagues in this and other cities. In many cases little or no consideration seems to have been given to the suitability of the location chosen by some booksellers. These are apt in case of failure to attribute their ill success to the indifference or the ignorance of the public, to the department store, their bad luck, or to the inevitable "hard times," because they overlook the simple fact that their difficulties are due to the mistake they originally made in opening a shop in a neighborhood where there was no demand for their services.

In a sea of books

2011-06-12T06:00:00.022-05:00

Some days, this is what I feel like in my office. Not a bad thing.

This is a French postcard from Editions du Desastre titled, Le Liseur, or The Reader. The copyright date is 2008, Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis.

A bookseller's trading card

2011-06-10T10:10:00.006-05:00

Collectible trading cards (not to be confused with business trade cards) can be traced back to the 1700s, but the heyday for such paper collectibles seems to have been the late 1800s through early 1900s. Included in that time frame is the popular cigarette card, issued with tobacco products of the day. Images on the cards could be of famous people, animals, places, or events. In addition to advertising the tobacco company, they also served a practical purpose of shoring up the flimsy packaging in which they were inserted.

Among the more popular images in America for cigarette cards were those of professional baseball players. Their collectible value has grown over the years, with one player in particular, Honus Wagner, eclipsing the million dollar mark.

Across the pond in Great Britain, there is no answer to the Wagner card, but tobacco companies did issue their own cigarette cards with images of a variety of celebrities and well-known personalities in various walks of life and professions (see Pat O'Connell's site for a good sampling of the variety).

For Churchmans' Cigarettes, a brand of the W.A. & A.C. Churchman company, a bookseller made the team one year (maybe more, but at least one year). That choice may have gone unrivaled in the States; at least, I don't know of any American booksellers who appeared on cigarette or other trading cards.

Miss Christina Foyle, Bookseller, of the long-established and well-known Foyles in London (established in 1903), was depicted on card number 14 in a series of 50 titled "In Town To-Night." Here is what is written on the back her card:

The younger daughter of Mr. W.A. Foyle, Miss Christina Foyle is a partner in the famous firm of W. & G. Foyle, Ltd., the largest second-hand booksellers in the world. All her life she has lived among three million books and in order to keep up their stock, Miss Foyle goes to every country in Europe and the Near East to buy books. She organizes the very successful Foyle's Literary Luncheons, which started with two hundred people and now boast an attendance of fifteen hundred or more. Practically every celebrity has spoken there, and on every possible subject. Miss Foyle's hobbies are yachting, reading and skating.

And scheming up methods for destroying the store she was to inherit, if the information reported on the Wikipedia page about her is accurate. A less-than-flattering assessment of her management skills is stated in the following passage from that page:

In 1945, control of the shop passed to Christina Foyle, daughter of founder William. It was under Christina that the shop stagnated, with little investment and poorly paid staff who could be fired on a whim. She also refused to install any modern conveniences such as electronic tills or calculators; nor would orders be taken by phone. However, the shop excelled in other fields: Expensive books ordered from as far off as Germany were sent with a bill without prepayment. The store operated through a payment system that required customers to queue three times (once to collect an invoice for a book, and then again to pay the invoice, then a third to collect the book), simply because sales staff were not allowed to handle cash. Equally mystifying to customers was a shelving arrangement that categorized books by publisher, rather than by topic or author. A quote of this period is: "Imagine Kafka had gone into the book trade." In the 1980s, rival bookshop, Dillons, placed an advertisement saying "Foyled again? Try Dillons" in a bus shelter opposite Foyles.

And where is Dillons today, while Foyles keeps on rolling? They weren't Foyled; they got Waterstoned.

Five books for Stefan Lorant

2011-06-05T11:20:00.002-05:00

In the letter below, Stefan Lorant ordered five books in 1949 from a book store in New York. Was there anything significant about that? Before I investigated the purchase further, I wanted to know something about the buyer, Stefan Lorant.

In a nutshell, Stefan Lorant (1901-1997) was a Hungarian-American author, editor, photographer, filmmaker, and pioneering photojournalist.

An article about Lorant, found online at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh site refers to him as the first major editor of modern photojournalism. Michael Hallett, in the title of his biography on Lorant (Scarecrow Press, 2005), anoints him the Godfather of Photojournalism.

One of the first things I learned about this native Hungarian is that about 1919, Franz Kafka helped him get a job as a violinist in a Czechoslovakian movie house at age 19. Not bad for starters. It got even better and I became intrigued with the letter writer and what led him to this business correspondence with a bookseller in New York in 1949.

Though he may have had a respectable talent playing the violin, Lorant would not become known for his musicianship. A year after the movie house gig, young Lorant was making a successful foray into filmmaking in Vienna with a film about Mozart. During the 1920s he made a series of films in Germany, wearing the hats of writer, director, cameraman, and photographer. Casting for one of his films, he reportedly auditioned a young actress, whom he advised to find another line of work. Her name was Marlene Dietrich. Can't win 'em all.

Later in the same decade, he began writing for German publications and wound up in hot water when Hitler came into power in the 1930s. Seems Lorant had been writing some none-too-flattering things about Hitler before he came into power in 1933. The prison sentence was short and six months later he was released

After his release from prison, Lorant eventually emigrated to England, where his prison memoir, I was Hitler's Prisoner, had been successfully published. There, he did pioneering work in the field of photojournalism. Continuing his cultivation of acquaintances with the powerful and famous, Lorant met and promoted Winston Churchill, helping to elevate his political career.

Failing to obtain citizenship in England, Lorant emigrated to America and became a respected author, learning and writing about the history of his adopted country. You get the feeling there wasn't much this creative soul couldn't do.

It was as a writer living in Lenox, Massachusetts that Stefan Lorant produced the piece of ephemera featured in this post--one that I'm getting to in a roundabout way.

In a batch of old business correspondence from Schulte's Book Store in New York (see the correspondence with Rose Wilder Lane), now in my collection, I found the letter written by Lorant from his home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Lorant wrote to Schulte's to place an order for five books, which he indicated on an enclosed "FDR" list. Unfortunately, that list was not included with this correspondence when it came into my possession.

FDR, of course, refers to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After emigrating to America, Lorant immersed himself in American history and among his many books on the subject, he authored a series of books dealing with American presidents. His biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was published in 1950. The letter above is dated May 20, 1949. It's pretty safe to assume Lorant was purchasing books by or about FDR from Schulte's FDR list to research for his biography of the former president.

There is no mention of a check enclosed, nor a request for credit, but someone at Schulte's noted on the letter, in pencil, to extend credit to this customer. Perhaps he was a repeat customer, or would become one. He had many more books to write after 1950 and could have relied on Schulte's again for research material.

Stefan Lorant led a remarkably creative and productive life, passing away in 1997 at the age of 96. His talents contributed to and influenced many creative genres. He lived in several countries in Europe and became an American citizen. He learned languages and made friends and acquaintances with famous and influential people from Kafka and Churchill in Europe to Henry Luce and the Kennedys in America, among many others.

His was a twentieth century odyssey that traversed two continents, emerging fields of creative expression, and major players on the world's stage. And this ephemeral piece of correspondence in the form of a brief letter to a bookseller offers a glimpse into the minutiae of a creative process and a creative life.

More on Stefan Lorant:

Menno Hertzberger catalogue poster

2011-04-27T15:25:00.009-05:00

Booksellers throughout the centuries have advertised their books in various print forms from broadsides and newspapers to the most popular medium of the last few centuries--the catalogue. Until recently, though, I'd never come across anything that advertised the advertisement. That appears to be what Dutch bookseller Menno Hertzberger (1897-1982) did with this 14 X 18-inch poster.

I say appears because this could have been a poster created from the catalogue cover by someone who just liked the cover and wanted a large copy suitable for framing.

However, the trademark on the reverse side of the poster is Fotorite, a company that produced print processing products, including the paper upon which this catalogue image was printed.

Fotorite is or was owned by the Belgian company Agfa-Gevaert. A U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for the trademark above in 1966, but the company may have been in existence well before the trademark filing. Given the proximity of Menno Hertzberger in Amsterdam to Agfa (pre-1964 merger with Gevaert) in Belgium, it is conceivable that Hertzberger's company used Agfa's Fotorite company to print a poster replica of Catalogue 241's cover art.

I only bring up that bit of investigative evidence in an attempt to date this poster and support the assumption that it was produced about the time Hertzberger's Catalogue 241 was published and that it was used as a promotional item for that catalogue.

Catalogue 241 was issued in 1963, according to a current dealer listing. The provenance of the poster is unknown to me, so I can only speculate that it was created as an advertising piece for the catalogue.

Then again, the image presented on the catalogue cover, views of an early printing press, is pretty interesting and would look nice displayed in a frame. Whether or not that was the intent of an individual other than Hertzberger, that is the reason I bought it.

Menno Hertzberger was an antiquarian bookseller, who at the young age of 23, started his own company, the Internationaal Antiquariaat, in Amsterdam in 1920. In the 1930s he founded the Dutch Association of Antiquarian Booksellers. World War II dealt him a devastating blow, not only wiping out his business, but his family as well.

He rebuilt his business and his life from scratch after the war and even helped found the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) in 1947. He had a remarkable career as an antiquarian bookseller and wrote extensively about bibliography and the history of the book.

The subject of Black on White (Catalogue 241), a history of printing and famous presses, is an appropriate one to have as a catalogue representative of Menno Hertberger's passion for books and printing history. I'm sure, though, that most of his catalogues could be deemed worthy representatives of that passion.

William Briggs, Book Steward

2011-04-12T11:44:00.001-05:00

Regarding bibliophiles, I have come across the word "steward" in conjunction with collections of fine books. Those privileged enough to own fine, rare books are not only collectors, but stewards of these treasures. They preserve and maintain individual books and viable collections until it is time to transfer both the books and the stewardship to another collector or entity. However, until I came across the Canadian publisher's letterhead below, I had never seen the title of Book Steward formally conferred upon an individual. Meet Rev. William Briggs of Toronto.

I have a batch of business correspondence here between William Briggs of Methodist Book & Publishing House of Toronto and a Mr. John A. Glasby of Canfield, Ontario. Three billheads and the letter comprise about two months of bookselling for Briggs with Mr. Glasby--December 1902 to February 1903. I found Briggs' title with the publishing house on the letterhead along with an interesting book sale for a religious publishing concern.

In the letter, dated February 26th, 1903, Briggs refers to two titles Mr. Glasby is interested in purchasing. Both are secular works, which would appear to run contrary to a publisher of church and religious material. The billheads indicate purchases in keeping with a Methodist publisher. Curious about Briggs selling titles such as Progress of Canada During the 19th Century and the Modern Encyclopedia (in eight volumes), I found an explanation on the site, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online:

In February 1879, as part of a reorganization of the church's publishing wing in Toronto, the Methodist Book and Publishing House, Briggs was elected book steward, or business manager. The house was then a small bookstore and plant that sold bibles, hymn books, catechisms, commentaries, biographies, and Sunday school books, printed such publications as the Christian Guardian, and did a small amount - two or three titles a year - of original publishing. Under Briggs's leadership, it was to become one of the most important Canadian publishing houses by the end of the century.

Given the ephemeral nature of content on various sites across the Web, and just in case this blog survives the unforeseen demise of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, the complete entry for the book steward William Briggs is copied below for anyone interested in reading further.

BRIGGS, WILLIAM, Methodist minister and publisher; b. 9 Sept. 1836 in Banbridge (Northern Ireland), son of Thomas Briggs and Mary ---; m. 27 Aug. 1868 Rosalie Marian Clarke (d. 1919) in Montreal, and they had a son; d. 5 Nov. 1922 in Port Credit, Ont.

William Briggs was born into a Scottish-Irish family. His mother died when he was six. Around this time the family moved to Liverpool, England, where Briggs was educated at Mount Street Grammar School and Liverpool Collegiate Institute. He subsequently acquired some commercial training, but soon rejected the idea of a business career. According to the Reverend John Saltkill Carroll*, Briggs experienced "an undeniable conversion" in boyhood, and he was soon preaching in and around Liverpool. He immigrated to the Canadas in his early twenties and was introduced into the Canada Conference of the Methodist Church. Received on trial as a lay preacher at Durham (Ormstown), Lower Canada, in 1859, he was ordained into the ministry in 1863. During the next 15 years he served at churches in Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, London, Cobourg, and Belleville.

By the late 1870s Briggs was at the height of a successful ministerial career. In 1876 he had become pastor at the centre of Canadian Methodism: Metropolitan Church in Toronto. Though little is known of his religious or social views, he was a popular preacher, by all accounts one who combined theology with humour and pragmatism. "While others have been best at first, and have gradually degenerated into mere dawdling, goody-goody talkers," one newspaper reported, "Mr. Briggs has gone steadily forward in pulpit power, in broad mental culture, and in general excellence and influence." His administrative abilities had been recognized with appointments as financial secretary (1874) and secretary (1876-77) of the Toronto Conference and chairman of the district (1875).

In February 1879, as part of a reorganization of the church's publishing wing in Toronto, the Methodist Book and Publishing House, Briggs was elected book steward, or business manager. The house was then a small bookstore and plant that sold bibles, hymn books, catechisms, commentaries, biographies, and Sunday school books, printed such publications as the Christian Guardian, and did a small amount - two or three titles a year - of original publishing. Under Briggs's leadership, it was to become one of the most important Canadian publishing houses by the end of the century.

As book steward, Briggs continued to concentrate on church-related material; the output of Sunday school publications, in particular, expanded greatly. However, with the house firmly established as a profitable business and ensconced in new quarters in 1889, his energies turned to the development of a secular list. The number of British and American works that it reprinted rose dramatically; non-religious works appeared under the imprint "William Briggs." The firm also entered the school-textbook market and was active in commercial job printing.

Perhaps most important, Briggs oversaw a significant increase in the number of Canadian publications. By the 1890s his house was publishing about 20 original works each year. Some were about religion or were written by Methodist scholars, among them George John Blewett*, but new subject areas were also developed, especially history, fiction, and poetry. Most of the titles in these areas dealt with Canadian subjects. Indeed, the Methodist Book and Publishing House consciously presented itself as a publisher of Canadian works, frequently emphasizing the patriotic and nation-building aspects of its activities. Briggs was aware that a market was developing for books by Canadian authors and dealing with Canadian themes, and his success lay in his ability to respond to this cultural nationalism. Possessed of sharp critical and commercial faculties and capable of gauging public tastes, Briggs provided opportunities for Canadian authors, offering them encouraging editors such as Edward Samuel Caswell*, and he trained a new generation of publishers. Among the bestsellers to emanate from his house were Songs of a sourdough (1907) by Robert William Service* and Sowing seeds in Danny (1908) by Helen Letitia McClung [Mooney*].

Briggs's involvement with books did not curtail his participation in other areas of the church. He continued to preach and was a delegate to every General Conference between 1874 and 1918. As well, he was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States (Washington, 1882) and to ecumenical conferences in Washington (1891) and London (1901). Awarded an honorary dd in 1886 by Victoria University in Cobourg, he was a member of its board of regents in 1906-7. He also held positions outside the church: he became a member of Toronto's Board of Trade in 1898 and served terms as president of the Master Printers' and Bookbinders' Association of Toronto.

Accounts of Briggs often mentioned his blend of personal sincerity, geniality, and commercial aggressiveness. In 1880 John Carroll described him physically: medium in height and weight, "oval yet full-faced, with a noticeably well-developed head, beyond the average size." "As a man," Carroll continued, "he is modest without bashfulness; as a Christian, religious without cant; as a preacher, fervent and eloquent without rant; as a platform speaker, ready, pointed, and pertinent; and as a Connexional business man, capable and successful without being fussy and pretentious."

In the last decade of Briggs's stewardship, original publishing declined. He seemed more concerned with the erection of a substantial new building in 1913-15 and the sale of foreign books (agency publishing), a valuable part of the business. The General Conference named him book steward emeritus in 1918, when he was succeeded by the Reverend Samuel Wesley Fallis, and he stepped down altogether in 1919. On 1 July of that year the Methodist Book and Publishing House was renamed Ryerson Press after its founder, Egerton Ryerson*, and in 1920 it began a fresh phase under its new editor, Lorne Albert Pierce*. At a time when religious impulses were expressing themselves more and more in secular form, Briggs had steered the house away from its earlier focus on creed and narrow denominationalism and had been instrumental in its major expansion. As the Bookseller and Stationer (Toronto) commented, during his career as steward the name of William Briggs "became a household word wherever books were read in Canada."

Briggs died in 1922 at his son's home in Port Credit and was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. He left an estate worth more than $80,524, a personal testament to the sound business sense of a popular Methodist preacher.
Danielle Hamelin

© 2000 University of Toronto/Université Laval

Schulte's Book Store Correspondence: Rose Wilder Lane

2011-03-16T11:46:00.003-05:00

Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame. She was also a widely published journalist and author, who traveled from humble "Little House" beginnings to destinations around the world that her pioneering ancestors could never have imagined.

Mr. Pesky was a bookseller with Schulte's Book Store on Fourth Avenue in New York. During the 1960s, the last years of their lives, Mrs. Lane bought an interesting variety of books from Mr. Pesky and developed a friendship with her bookseller and his wife.

I have a small sampling of their correspondence during these years that sheds light on Rose's reading interests as well as her relationship with the bookseller, Mr. Pesky.

Columbia University has in its archives the records for Schulte's Book Store for the years 1918 to 1959. From the brief biography at the archives' site, I learned that Theodore E. Schulte started the business in 1917. Store manager, Philip Pesky, assumed ownership when Schulte died in 1950. When Pesky died a short five years later, the book store passed into his son's hands. This younger Pesky is the one whom Rose Wilder Lane addressed in the correspondence featured here from 1961 to 1968. We learn from this correspondence that he died in 1967.

I've acquired a batch of correspondence between Schulte's Book Store and various customers--mostly writers--from the early part of the twentieth century to mid-century and a bit beyond. All will be featured here in a series of posts. First up, though, are the postcards and letters that Rose Wilder Lane wrote to the man she described as her favorite bookseller.

The correspondence in this batch begins in 1961 with a personal post card from Danbury, Connecticut requesting a review copy of The Muckrakers: The Era in Journalism That Moved America to Reform - the Most Significant Magazine Articles of 1902-1912, edited by Arthur and Lila Weinberg and published in 1961 by Simon and Schuster. She appears to have been interested in a look back at a time when she started her own writing career around 1910.

A year later, another post card contains requests for various American and British books, as well as a standing order for review copies, as they came in, for the American Trail series.

Later the same year, 1962, she has a much longer list of books for Mr. Pesky to fill and send to Danbury, as she writes from Miami.

A new personal post card emerges in 1966 with Harlingen, Texas printed as the return address. This cards reveals a closer relationship with her bookseller, Mr. Pesky, as she gently chastises him for not sending her anything since she moved to Texas. She quickly adds that she hopes he and Mrs. Pesky are okay. She then acknowledges a Christmas present from Mrs. Pesky and states that it has a place in her new library in Harlingen. This indicates enough of a friendship to exchange Christmas gifts and a relationship not evident in previous correspondence.

A month later, Rose uses a recent Schulte's Book Store billhead, with one book listed, to write a note back to Mr. Pesky. She seems irritated by the fact that she has not received any of the numerous books she previously requested on her post cards. She either ran out of post cards with the Harlingen address, or she wanted to emphasize with the billhead that she had only received one book all year from Schulte's. At any rate, she wrote in red ink and requested her cards back, as she had not made a copy of all the books she wanted. Rose was quite a reader and impatient for new books to arrive.

In August of 1967, Rose's reading attention, or perhaps collector's attention, turns to Dickens. She had a 16-volume set published by Gebbie in Philadelphia, 1895. She was missing five volumes and indicated them in the letter. Later in a post card that month, she gives a more detailed description at the request of Mr. Pesky, who is is obviously having trouble finding exactly what she needs.

The last piece of correspondence I have is a typed letter from Rose to Schulte's, on Rose's letterhead, asking for two titles by Paul Lacroix. Her reading desires have now tuned to France in the 18th century as well as science and literature in the Middle Ages.

But the big news we learn in this letter is that Mr. Pesky has died. Seems like this would be the opening paragraph, but she put her order in first, then addressed the death of Mr. Pesky, stating that she is "grieved by the death of my long-time friend and favorite bookseller." In the same sentence, she returns to business with "I trust that my credit is still good with Schulte's."

It seems like an odd mix of business and grief, but it might appear that she held Mr. Pesky in high regard and her books just a bit higher. I don't know if she continued as a customer with Schulte's or if her credit continued with them, but Rose did not have much longer for collecting and reading books or buying them from anyone. She died the following year in 1968.

Rose Wilder Lane was a remarkable woman who appeared in her mother's Little House series, traveled around the world as a journalist during World War I and later for the Red Cross, and sympathized with Communism until she was discouraged by what she saw in the newly formed Soviet Union. She became friends with President Herbert Hoover. During World War II, she avoided rationing by growing her own food. To avoid paying social security taxes, which she didn't believe in (the whole system seemed a ponzi scheme to her), she quit her job with the National Economic Council. She wrote and authored numerous articles, stories, and books. At the age of 78 she went to South Vietnam as a war correspondent! As for her mother's books, there is speculation that Rose's editing and help was significant enough to have been named as a co-author of the Little House books.

While this small batch of correspondence does not stand up against that of another writer and bookseller chronicled in 84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff (Lippincott, 1970), it does offer a peek into the tastes and personality of a fascinating woman through her reading and the bookseller whom she befriended and relied upon to provide her with the books she needed.

More on Rose Wilder Lane:

http://www.cato.org/special/threewomen/wilder-lane.html

http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/wilder/index.html

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/08/10/090810crat_atlarge_thurman#ixzz1GIlh7Jr7

J.R. Osgood, the Harvard Book, and Dickensiana

2011-03-03T10:53:00.002-06:00

Is there a connection between Osgood and The Harvard Book? Maybe. Not one of your more compelling bibliomysteries, but the correspondence below raises a few questions about the history of a particular book. The Dickensiana is no mystery. Read on...

Here is a nice postal cover with letterhead combo from Boston publisher J.R. Osgood. The company's logo and return address graphic, along with the 1875 postmark, provide a bit of company genealogy.

The oval image includes a book with J.R. Osgood & Co. printed on it. Beneath that we learn that Osgood either partnered with of succeeded Ticknor & Fields, as the previous name was Fields & Osgood, preceded by Ticknor & Fields. A descendant of the original Ticknor, whose book business started in 1832, took over J.R. Osgood & Co. and returned the Ticknor name to the business. I wrote about this in another post about a Ticknor & Company postal cover.

Osgood is writing to a Mr. F.O. Vaille in Cambridge, Massachusetts inquiring about a bond owed him. He gets right to the point: "Where is the bond you agreed to send me two weeks ago?"

A search for Vaille results mainly in articles related to a book he co-published in 1875 (same year as the letter from Osgood above): The Harvard Book (Welch, Bigelow, and Company, Cambridge, 1875). The two-volume set consisted of historical, biographical, and descriptive sketches illustrated with heliotype plates and wood engravings. Adding to the aesthetics were leather bond and gold embossing. I wonder if Osgood might have been referring to the leather bond when inquiring about where the promised bonds were? And could this be evidence of Osgood's involvement initially with publishing The Harvard Book? Perhaps Osgood started out as publisher, but conflicts arose between author and publisher and the job went to Welch, Bigelow, and Company.

Both the book and its author have fallen into obscurity. Osgood's books still pop up in old book shops and vintage ephemera related to the publisher surfaces occasionally. So the ephemera here is primarily significant for the history it conveys about a major publishing house in 19th century Boston in its evolution to the company today known as Houghton Mifflin. Any perceived mystery is for fun.

In researching J.R. Osgood, I found a legitimately fun item of literary history involving his role in an interesting piece of Dickensiana. In 1868, Osgood was a junior partner with Ticknor & Fields, Charles Dickens' American publisher. Dickens was in Boston to collect information about a murder case, the facts of which tied into a new novel he was undertaking at the time: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Two years later, Dickens would be dead and the novel unfinished.

While Dickens was in Boston, his reading tour manager, George Dolby, and Osgood somehow got involved in a walking race. Perhaps Dickens, an avid walker himself, originated the idea. What is certain, though, is that Dickens authored a folio size broadside about the race: The Great International Walking Match of Feb. 29, 1868.

According to Charles E. Goodspeed in Yankee Bookseller (Houghton Mifflin, 1937), only a few copies of the broadside were printed for guests at a dinner hosted by Dickens to celebrate the event. Goodspeed's book is where I initially learned of Osgood's involvement with Dickens and the race. The Charles Dickens Museum provided more information as well as an image of the rare broadside, shown below.

Incidentally, Osgood won the race, edging out Dolby with some help from Annie Fields, who provided a shot of brandy in the last lap of a six-mile race on a cold, snowy day. (Victorian Boston Today)

The J.K. Gill Company: Booksellers and Stationers

2011-02-13T12:01:00.000-06:00

Here's a 1904 billhead from Oregon, a state under-represented in my collection:

On the date shown, a family Bible was sold to a customer for $5. Small sales such as that belied the much greater business successes Gill had cultivated by the time this billhead received its paid stamp.

Information on Gill was readily available and more than I had expected to find. I soon learned why from Gill's Wikipedia page.

Gill started out in the bookselling business by marrying into it. A native from England, he had gone to Salem, Oregon in 1864 after living with his family in Massachusetts where they had emigrated. Married two years later, he began running the family's bookstore in Salem. In short order, he purchased the business, but soon sold it and headed for Portland where he entered into a new bookselling business with George A. Steel--Gill & Steel.

In 1878, Gill once again became a sole proprietor when he bought out his partner, Steel, and changed the name of the business to The J.K. Gill Company, which remained the name throughout the lifetime of the business.

Gill expanded the business into stationery and office supplies and helped found the Columbia River Paper company as well as the Merchants National Bank. He also served on the boards of several local insurance companies. He lived a long, fruitful life, dying at age 90.

But Gill's business continued to grow after his death, and by 1990 it consisted of 63 stores selling books, stationery, office supplies, and art supplies across four states. That was as big as it got. Before the decade was out, the J.K. Gill Company was out of business. Competition from the big chain bookstores and office supply stores was, apparently, a major reason for their demise.

In researching J.K. Gill, I found the blog of the riverrun bookshop in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, which offers more history of a personal nature from the 1950s. The blogger is Louisa Scioscia Stephens, daughter of riverrun's founder, Frank Scioscia and wife of riverrun's present owner. Both her parents worked at J.K. Gill's, if I have interpreted the blog posts on family history correctly.

Stephens provides some nice, descriptive memories of the Portland store and includes a picture from the rooftop of J.K. Gill's 10-story building in Portland in 1945. Her account is a welcome addition to the factual chronology of Gill and his business. Her writing allows one to walk through the store and experience its charms and attractions, from the layout to the people who worked there. I always enjoy finding this kind of personal tie-in to a piece I'm researching. It helps breathe a little life into a business's ephemeral representation.

Wrapping up, here's the face behind the business's origins, found on the Wikipedia site--J.K. Gill, circa 1911.

Cagwin & Noteware: Carson, Nevada book dealers

2011-02-10T04:31:00.000-06:00

When is a book dealer not a book dealer? Maybe never, as long as books are offered for sale. But diversification, which vintage ephemera confirms has long been a trademark of the bookselling business, can sometimes obscure the store's bookselling identity. Still, it's interesting to see the array of goods in various locations that got bundled with books in a store's inventory. Old billheads convey a good sampling of that business history.

Examining this 1897 billhead from Cagwin & Noteware (great name!) of Carson, Nevada (Carson City, I assume), books are mentioned first in the tagline under the company's name, which makes me think of them as book dealers. And I'm assuming here that Cagwin & Noteware's core business was books and related reading and writing matter. But books quickly fade into the background as you scan across the billhead below and the impressive offering of other goods.

Newspapers, a common offering in book shops, is followed by the uncommon Cutlery and expected Stationery. Cutlery? Books and knives--why not? Carson City in 1897 was just a generation removed from the Old West.

Check out the left side of the billhead and find more unusual items for a bookseller to stock. One could find artist's materials as well as decorative goods for the ladies (no gender bias intended, we're exploring the nineteenth century) that included window shades, curtain poles and fixtures, optical goods (not sure about the decorative qualities there), mouldings, and picture frames. And not to forget the men (fishing tackle, guns, ammunition) or the kids (toys) or the students (school and blank books) or, last but not least, the musicians (music books and sheet music).

Cagwin & Noteware had everything but a velocipede-power lathe... no, wait, they had one of those, too. The Nevada Appeal (present-day newspaper) has a column, Past Pages, that reprints interesting newspaper items from Nevada's past. A column from last month included something for Cagwin & Noteware, 120 years ago: All sorts: Don't fail to examine that patent velocipede-power lathe at Cagwin & Noteware ... constructed to work wood and iron.

I was going to say Cagwin & Noteware sold everything but the kitchen sink, but I'm not so sure they didn't sell one of those at some point. As is the case today with many brick and mortar shops, a bookseller in earlier times had to diversify. Cagwin & Noteware got pretty creative with diversifying their inventory.

Though they identified themselves as book dealers first, they were smart to offer a variety of things their customers needed and equally smart to advertise it on their billheads. Some book dealers in certain areas just couldn't afford to be thought of as selling only books. But I'll bet I never run across another book dealer who also sold velocipede-power lathes!

Ed Sullivan, Mrs. Paul, and the Beatles

2011-02-09T07:36:00.026-06:00

An odd grouping for a post on this blog, eh? Perhaps it deviates a bit from the usual fare, but there is a book ephemera tie-in.

Mrs. Paul's Kitchens gave away copies of Michael David Harris' book, Always on Sunday: Ed Sullivan, an Inside View (Meredith Press, 1968) to promote an October 17, 1971 CBS special on the Ed Sullivan years. Sullivan's show had been off the air since June of that year.

Inside the book, I found the letter from Mrs. Paul's Kitchens detailing all this, while also plugging their fish sticks and related products. I remember both the Ed Sullivan Show and eating Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks when I was growing up in the 1960s, so this had a good bit of nostalgic appeal to me (still enjoy old Sullivan clips, don't like the fish sticks!).

In addition to the letter explaining the reason for the gift book, there was a presentation bookplate affixed to the front free endpaper: Compliments of Mrs. Paul's Kitchens, Inc. Now there's a rarity for bookplate collectors!

For anyone who remembers watching the Ed Sullivan Show, this book would bring back more than a few memories, I'm sure. In the photo section, I came across an act Sullivan booked that garnered a then-record 73 million viewers: The Beatles. They made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show 47 years ago today--February 9, 1964.

That appearance is summed up this way on Wikipedia:

Their first appearance on February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture and the beginning of the British Invasion in music. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for US television, and was characterized by an audience composed largely of screaming hysterical teenage girls in tears. The Beatles followed Ed's show opening intro, performing "All My Loving", "Till There Was You" which featured the names of the group members superimposed on closeup shots, including the famous "Sorry girls, he's married:" caption on John Lennon, and "She Loves You". They returned later in the program to perform "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand".

I just found this book and the promotional letter last night in a box in storage. I thought it would be fun to write a quick piece more for nostalgia's sake than anything significant to contribute to this blog, given the letter's tenuous connection to bibliophemera.

This morning, I heard a local newscaster comment about the Beatles making their first appearance on Ed Sullivan on this date. I checked it out and sure enough. What a coincidence! So I had to mention the Beatles here, too, and do it today on the anniversary of their first Ed Sullivan Show performance.

They got top billing on that show 47 years ago, but only third billing today in this blog post, behind Ed Sullivan and Mrs. Paul. Doesn't seem right, but that was the order of discovery.

Alfred Lorentz, bookseller of Leipzig

2011-02-04T08:34:00.002-06:00

Last month, I wrote about a lawyer and publisher in California, in 1898, sending a letter to Leipzig, Germany in an attempt to find a bookseller in Europe for his new book (see Any bookseller in Leipzig will do). He addressed it to Any Bookseller in Leipzig and hoped for the best. Notation on the envelope indicated he got lucky. Alfred Lorentz apparently was the bookseller who received the letter.

I thought a nice companion piece to that cover would be some ephemera from Lorentz's business. I got lucky and found something less than a month later.

This looks like a "home-made" postcard or ad card from 1923 (postmark date). The paper is thinner than card stock and the piece is cut a bit uneven. Still it got the job done for business communications. A rough translation of the message on the backside of the card indicates that Lorentz was selling everything from novelties to classic works of literature and the arts and sciences. He invites customers to come by and examine his stock. There is also mention of a special room where rare and antiquarian books can be viewed.

I would expect to find philosophical works as well in Lorentz's stock. In researching this bookseller, I learned of his business relationship in the 1870s and 1880s with Friedrich Nietzsche, the German-born philosopher whose writings influenced well into the twentieth century such creative figures as Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Gustav Mahler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Strauss, and William Butler Yeats among many others (Adolph Hitler as well).

Thomas H. Brobjer, in his book, Nietzsche's Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography, references the importance of Alfred Lorentz's book shop in Leipzig as a source of reading material for Nietzsche's library during the 1870s and 1880s. Brobjer's research of the ephemera related to their transactions, i.e., letters and billheads, revealed the connection between the bookseller and famous philosopher.

Some 40 or 50 years later, a postal piece of ephemera from Lorentz's book shop reveals his books were still sought by such individuals as the addressee, Professor Dr. Klemm in Leipzig. This would have to be Otto Klemm, author, editor, and Professor of Applied Psychology at the Institute for Experimental Psychology in Leipzig.

This time period from Nietzsche to Klemm, roughly half a century, is all I can find on the life of Lorentz and his Leipzig book shop that provided literature in the arts and sciences for many readers and thinkers, influential and otherwise. Perhaps the beginning and end or Lorentz's story can be found in further ephemeral pieces of his business transactions.

Going Dutch: Dinner with the Nederlandse Boekverkopersbond

2011-01-19T19:56:00.018-06:00

The Nederlandse Boekverkopersbond is the Dutch Booksellers Association. The graphic above is taken from the menu (below) of a dinner they held in 1947, celebrating 40 years as an organization.

The association is still going strong and celebrated their centennial in 2007, for which I found a YouTube tribute. I see from their Web site, as well as the video, that a representative from the roundtable of cartoonish characters in the menu graphic continues in the logo today for the association.

And, of course, the signature dish of any organization's dinner meeting was served... Chicken. Even sixty-something years ago. It just sounds a whole lot better as Poularde de Bressi.

Dinner celebrations aside, the Dutch Booksellers Association plays a major role in the Netherlands along with the Groep Algemene Uitgevers (Trade Publishing Group) promoting book reading and book buying in their country. These two groups teamed up in 1983 to form the CPNB, which is an acronym for (in English) Collective Promotion for the Dutch Book.

The first paragraph from their Web site is worth quoting here, not only for the numbers that attest to the collaboration's success, but also for their blending of idealistic and commercially-driven goals of reading books and buying those books from local book shops. I am particularly biased toward the idea of supporting the booksellers!

About 40 million trade books are sold in the Netherlands each year with a total turnover of some 500 million Euros. Since 1930, Dutch publishers and booksellers have cooperated in promoting trade books; in 1983 this task was allotted to the CPNB (in Dutch: Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek), a foundation set up in Amsterdam. The CPNB aims to encourage the habits of book reading and book buying. Each CPNB campaign has its own mix of two strands, one idealistically promoting reading, the other, more commercially, encouraging the public to visit their local bookshop.

A few minutes with Andy Rooney... at the Mayfair Bookshop

2011-01-14T03:00:00.007-06:00

A chariot driver and team of horses leap across the landscape (Manhattan?). Following that graphic, the title, Today's Books, jumps out at you on the cover of this little bookshop catalog. Today is March 1946 and Today's Books could be purchased at the Mayfair Bookshop, owned by George W. Stair in New York City at 7 West 49th Street--Rockefeller Center.

Thumbing through the catalog for items of interest sixty-five years ago, an ad for this book caught my eye: The Story of the Stars and Stripes: A Paper for Joe, by Bud Hutton and Andy Rooney. Yes, that Andy Rooney--the 60 Minutes journalist and author. You could also call him an ex-college football player (Colgate University) and a World War II veteran. And he was already a veteran author in 1946, having written his first book while serving in Europe in 1944.

Rooney was drafted into the Army in 1941. In 1942 he began reporting for the military newspaper The Stars and Stripes in London. The following year, 1943, he and five other correspondents flew with the Eighth Air Force on the first American bombing raid over Germany. Rooney's first book (also co-authored) was Air Gunner (Farrar & Rinehart, 1944), about his observations of the Eighth Air Force during his time with them.

Rooney went to work for CBS in 1949 and did a tremendous amount of writing for them in the form of essays, scripts and series. I can't find another book he published until 1981's bestseller, A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (Atheneum, 1981), which launched a run of some 15 books to date. These are the books we associate today with Andy Rooney.

But during and immediately following World War II, a young pacifist turned soldier cut his journalistic teeth and parlayed his wartime reporting experiences into his first two books. You could probably find both of them at the Mayfair Bookshop in Manhattan back in 1946.

And by the way, that young soldier/author is 92 years old today.

Happy Birthday, Andy Rooney!

City Book Store Fan

2011-01-11T09:41:00.024-06:00

I received my quarterly issue of Ephemera News (a publication of the Ephemera Society of America) yesterday and one article in particular got my attention: The Appeal of a Fan, by Moira F. Harris.

She writes about a hand fan she purchased at an estate sale and muses on the various reasons one might collect such a fan. There are collectors of hand fans and collectors of ephemera, including hand fans, with connections to various themes of interest, such as images, advertisements, or locales to name some. This article reminded me of a hand fan I have in my collection of ephemera related to book-related businesses.

I don't collect hand fans, but this one found its way into my bibliophemera collection for the obvious reason of its connection to an old book store.

The City Book Store in the city of Wooster, state unnamed, sold or gave these fans away probably around the turn of the century (19th to 20th) judging by the photo of the little girl and her books on one side of the fan. The other side features information about the book store and its various products.

You could find more than just books at City Book Store, which I'm reasonably certain is in Wooster, Ohio (the only Wooster I can find). Pens and stationery have long been associated with book store inventory, but the soda fountain and Kodak seem to run a bit outside the typical attractions. However, the ads for these commodities help date this book store fan.

Soda fountains have been around since the late 1800s and their heyday was in the early decades of the twentieth century. They are usually associated with drug stores, but the City Book Store in Wooster advertised one in its establishment.

It also advertised the Kodak--for the children and the whole family. Kodak cameras came along in the 1880s along with soda fountains--a coincidental pairing for the City Book Store. In the book American Icons (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), a chapter on Kodak cameras by Richard N. Masteller brings into focus the importance George Eastman's "toy," so ubiquitous as to be found even in a book store in Wooster, Ohio as well as a drug store or department store in Any City, Any State, in America:

It brought popular, personal photography to the masses by enabling everyone--even a child--to become his or her own image-maker. To promote amateur photography, Eastman Kodak marketed its invention as a toy. While production figures increased each year during the 1890s, it was the Brownie camera of 1900, marketed explicitly to children and their parents, that accelerated and assured the democratization of photography.

Perhaps the Kodak on the City Book Store fan was a Brownie, as the slogan might suggest. The book store appears to have taken a page out of the Eastman Kodak marketing book with the advertising slogan "The Children and the Whole Family." I guess this book store in Wooster did its part for the "democratization of photography."

Other than a place in the store's name, and being lumped in with pens and stationery, books in the City Book Store appear to be lacking in prominence against the competition of popular culture of the day. More than a hundred years later, they're still battling popular culture for acceptance, but they continue to hang in there and thrive.

Any bookseller in Leipzig will do

2011-01-09T22:37:00.004-06:00

Maybe. Maybe not. And why Leipzig?

More than a hundred years ago, 1898 to be exact, California publisher Gilbert Wyman, of Fruit Vale (Fruitvale) in Alameda County, sent a letter addressed simply To Any Bookseller in Leipsic (sic) Germany. The cover, with 1898 postmark, is shown below.

I can find only one book published by G. Wyman: Public Land and Mining Laws of Alaska, The Northwest Territory, and the Province of British Columbia, compiled by Wyman, and it was published in 1898, the year this letter went out in search of any bookseller who might be interested in stocking a few copies of, presumably, this book.

Wyman was an attorney, according to an 1897 copy of California Attorneys Directory. Perhaps as a publisher, Wyman was a "one hit wonder" with regards to actually getting a book into print. And "hit" may be stretching it quite a bit with this title. I would assume Wyman had a limited market for this book on mining laws in the northwest region of the North American continent. Maybe not, though--the Alaska gold rush was on by 1898. Apparently, Wyman sought to expand that market overseas. A simple strategy unfolds as I examine this empty envelope: Prepare a form letter advertising the book, send it to Any Bookseller in a selected city, or cities, in the world, and hope the postmaster makes a good selection for you. Or any selection.

Whether there were other cities in this marketing strategy, I'll never know, but this letter did find its way to Leipzig, as evidenced by a German language stamp on the back of the envelope: Empfänger bei dar Buchhändler best-Nanstalt in Leipzig nicht ermittelt. Under that is a name and what looks like the date 22/198 (22 January 1898?). I'm not certain of the translation, but, keying on a few words, I believe it has something to do with a bookseller's receipt of the letter not being determined. What that means exactly, I'm not entirely sure.

But did Wyman's letter ever land in the hands of a bookseller in Leipzig? Perhaps the Post Office in Leipzig could not make the determination as to which bookseller should receive the letter. Perhaps it was forwarded to an agency of some sort that dealt with booksellers for them to make the determination. Whatever the case, the letter does not appear to have been returned to Wyman back in California. At least there are no indicators of such action on the envelope anywhere.

Why Leipzig of all the cities in the world in which Wyman could have peddled his book? And why would the postmaster in Leipzig have a stamp for letters not addressed to a specific bookseller?

Map found at Finswimmer Magazine online.
An excerpt from the Official Directory of the German Book Trade , 1906 (close enough to Wyman's posted letter), as reported in The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record, Volume 84, speaks to why Wyman may have chosen this German city to sell his book and perhaps garner interest in North America's northwest gold mining country.

Quoting from that excerpt:

It may not be generally known that in Germany bookshops, as well as publishing houses, are not limited to the principal towns but are scattered all over the empire, and often found in very small places; to order all the books direct would be too expensive, thus the supply has to be specially organised.

The centre of the book trade in general is Leipzig; of 2,994 principal German publishers 2,886 keep stock there. Every publisher and every bookseller has an agent in this town with whom all business transactions are carried out. Booksellers, as a rule, send their orders to their agent in Leipzig, who transfers them to the corresponding publishers' agents in that city. The books, which otherwise would have to be posted direct in as many small parcels, are thus collected in Leipzig and sent to the different booksellers in one lot.

As already stated, the centre for the universal book trade is Leipzig, but in order to facilitate and accelerate business many publishers keep stock in other transit places and trade centres as well. According to the statistics in the new directory there are 10 booksellers' agencies in Berlin, 18 in Budapest, 117 in Leipzig, 5 in Prague, 11 in Stuttgart, 30 in Vienna, and 6 in Zurich. Some other figures may be of interest as well. Germany contains 348 publishing houses devoted solely to art publications, and 419 to music ; 147 shops specialise in the sale of new books, and 515 in the sale of music; 224 sell only second-hand books, the number of second-hand dealers who sell other books as well amounts to 1,640. There are 1,078 lending libraries conducted by booksellers, and 396 reading clubs. The number of booksellers who also sell objects of art, or music, or have a lending library &c. of any kind, or are also publishers, amounts to 6,600.

The directory, which is published every year, is drawn up in a clear and concise manner, and the methods by which it is kept up to date are very interesting and practical.

The first part, the directory proper, contains the name of the firm, of its owner, and the date on which he took possession, also the postal and telegraphic addresses. It further gives the names of his agents in the different towns, and generally, in the case of a publisher, his business rules and terms, or, if a bookseller, the conditions upon which he accepts new books on sale. It states besides whether he is a member of the Borsenverein, the chief association, and how far he acknowledges the trade rules for new or secondhand books &c.

The numbers tell quite a story. Leipzig was indeed the "universal centre" of the book trade, at least in Europe. Back in California, Wyman probably knew all this. Thus, his letter to Any Bookseller in Leipzig. But the rules cited in the directory extract above indicate a well regulated industry, one in which the Post Office could not call the shots on forwarding Wyman's letter.

Further support of Leipzig's long and important history with publishing and bookselling can be seen through the lens of the city's book fair heritage. The German history site Exulanten states on their page about book fairs:

By the 18th century, Leipzig had even become the center for trade with Polish and English goods and was known as 'the marketplace of all Europe'... Leipzig became the main German fair for books and consumer-goods. A technical fairground was opened in 1920 and by 1930 it drew visitors and exhibitors from 45 countries. By 1940, the fair included 19 more pavilions. Throughout the centuries, a whole book district developed in Leipzig complete with book museums. The Leipzig fair, which had occurred twice a year for seven centuries, was mostly destroyed by Allied bombs in World War Two along with an estimated 50,000 books, many of them rare, from the historic book district.

Not having studied in depth the history of the German book trade, I can only speculate on the factors involved in Wyman's very casual solicitation of his book. What I deduce from all this is that Wyman knew of Leipzig's reputation as a publishing and bookselling hub in Europe and with an overwhelming number of booksellers in that city his Any Bookseller address was sure to find a sales outlet in the old country. And with the Klondike Gold Rush in full swing, the lure of gold would create an interest in his book about the associated land and mining laws. What Wyman may not have known or fully appreciated was the highly structured organization of the book trade in Leipzig.

But the letter appears to have found its way to a bookseller whose name appears on the front of the envelope.

At first, I thought this name was Alfred Lorenz, but I cant find a Leipzig bookseller by that name. In German-Austrian music circles, yes, but not in a Leipzig book shop. Trying a variety of spellings, I happened upon Alfred Lorentz, with a "t," who was a bookseller in Leipzig.

That great resource, Seven Roads Gallery of Book Trade Labels had one of Lorentz's bookseller labels. Of course. I should always know to look there first.

I can only assume that someone in the chain of command from the Post Office to trade association to publisher to bookseller agent (or some variance thereof) thought of Lorentz, but misspelled his name. Must have been thinking of the musical Alfred. Nonetheless, Alfred Lorentz probably got to read a letter from a California lawyer who had published a book he wanted to sell to any bookseller of Leipzig. I wonder how many copies Alfred ordered?

A new Web site for bookseller labels

2010-12-25T22:24:00.008-06:00

Gabe Konrad, of Bay Leaf Books in Sand Lake, Michigan, has informed me of a new Web site he's launched devoted to bookseller labels. He writes, "I wanted a place where I could post interesting label news and keep a current list of links." Have a look at www.booksellerlabels.com and see if you agree with me that he's off to a fine start. I'll certainly be checking in regularly to see what's new. He has some great examples and helpful information on this diminutive paper collectible.

From time to time, I feature a few bookseller labels on this blog--those tiny, stamp-sized stickers that advertise a bookseller's business. You usually find them in older books affixed to a lower corner of either the front or rear endpaper. Some examples from my small collection are shown below.

Here's a few other collections that I've referenced before, which you'll also find on Konrad's site: Seven Roads Gallery of Book Trade Labels and the massive collection of Austrian collector, Reinhard Öhlberger, who has what is likely the largest collection of these labels--more than 24,000. Sarah Faragher's collection is also noteworthy, and I've corresponded with a Dutch collector, whose collection is extremely impressive.

But check out www.booksellerlabels.com for much more on this interesting collectible from booksellers both long gone and still with us.

Posts of Christmas Past

2010-12-25T07:59:00.006-06:00

This blog has only been around a few years, so there's not many posts here related to Christmas. Below are three that seemed appropriate for past Christmases and for reposting today on Christmas Day. To all who follow, subscribe, or otherwise stumble across this blog and also celebrate Christmas...

Merry Christmas!

Christmas books from Amarillo, Texas

The Christmas Cove Library

Dutton's Books for Children:
A Christmas handbill circa 1900

African bookseller on the Niger River

2010-12-22T16:48:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting picture of an African bookseller who is in danger of losing his business. The economy has nothing to do with it. Progress is about to do him in.

The year is 1961 and the reverse side of this Associated Press wire photo (below) indicates that this bookseller keeps shop on a ferry that transports passengers across the Niger River (country not named). In the near future, within the next five years, a bridge will be built across the river in the location where this ferry boat runs. Modern times and technology, circa 1965, will eliminate the need for water transport of people. No ferry, no book shop for this enterprising young man.

His books appear to be used and antiquarian in nature, with perhaps a few newer titles in the mix. The titles that are legible are in English (and the newer looking books). A dictionary, a book about manners, and one about the dangers of drinking and smoking. With the much older looking books on the table, the stock certainly appears eclectic in subject matter.

So what happened to the bookseller when that bridge was inevitably built some 45 years ago? Another ferry down river? A terrestrial setting? Whatever the surface, I think this guy probably landed on his feet.

Haunted Holmes Book Company in Oakland

2010-12-18T08:25:00.002-06:00

Does this look like a haunted building?

The Holmes Book Company was located here at 274 Fourteenth Street in 1931 according to the postmark date on the postal cover below.

And according to some, a ghost roamed the stacks mischievously throwing books and making some of the patrons feel uneasy. An article on haunted Oakland touches on this phenomenon. You can search the Internet, using the keywordsHolmes Book Company ghost, and find the same or similar references to the spooky goings on in the old book shop building.

Holmes was Harold C. Holmes, who lived from 1877-1965. A brief biography of Holmes is found at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, where his papers are archived. He was born in Toronto, Canada, but his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was about five years of age. There, his father started the Holmes Book Company, which had several antiquarian book shops in San Francisco and Oakland and offered the opportunity for Harold Holmes to enter the business. As a teenager, the younger Holmes worked with his father and eventually succeeded him in the family business, which he operated until he died.

Quoting directly from the bio in his archives, Holmes is described further:

An authority on California literary history, in his middle years Holmes was also active in Oakland civic affairs, serving as president of the Oakland Rotary Club (1946-47), a member of the Alameda County Probation Committee (1948), and, a trustee of the California College of Arts & Crafts. Holmes was working on his memoirs at the time of his death.

Those memoirs were published posthumously in a volume titled: Some Random Reminiscences of an Antiquarian Bookseller.

Holmes' descendants have attempted to reincarnate the book shop online, with some difficulty, it would appear: Holmes Book Company. The preceding link does offer some additional history on the company and features a photo of the building (built 1923-24) depicted on the envelope above. From that page, there is a History link that expounds a bit more, but many of the other links are broken or missing content. It has the makings of a fine online store with lots of history and interesting books to offer. I hope it finds its way, but I have to wonder if maybe that ghost has followed the book shop online and is creating mischief in cyberspace with the Internet version of the venerable old book shop...

The Pilgrim Bookshop in Brooklyn

2010-11-25T03:06:00.002-06:00

As the Thanksgiving Day holiday is upon us in America, where celebratory gatherings and dinners take place in honor of the pilgrims' first Thanksgiving feast, here's a (tenuous at best) pilgrim-themed piece of book trade ephemera for the occasion.

Well, this was as close as I could get to something Thanksgiving related--a blotter for a book shop with the name "Pilgrim." Were it located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, it would add a degree more of appropriateness.

However, this book shop appears to be in Brooklyn, according to the dealer who sold me the card, as well as a google map search on the address. Brooklyn is the only place I've been able to locate an intersection with the two street names indicated on the blotter. Locating any other details about this book shop has hit a dead end. These pilgrims seem to have vanished without a trace.

All I have is what's on this roughly 3-by-6-inch blotter, which dates about 1930s. October 2nd was the grand opening of the book shop, which also billed itself as a real circulating library. Why the real modifier, I don't know. Were there pretenders in the circulating library business? In addition to the library, Pilgrim Bookshop was to sell new and used books (indicated by their purchasing wants), as well as magazines, greeting cards, and stationery.

Without any evidence on the Internet of their existence--no references from any source--I wonder if they made it to their own opening? Did it become a neighborhood fixture for awhile? Did the literati and casual shoppers gather there? Maybe I'll find a clue someday and update this.

To all of you gathered across America today with family friends and a table full of turkey, dressing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie (among many other favorite foods) we enjoy in honor of the first Thanksgiving feast...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
The First Thanksgiving 1621, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Ad Cover for S.H. Zahm, Bookseller

2010-11-22T06:37:00.001-06:00

Here's an ad cover from 1890 for a Lancster, Pennsylvnia bookseller who used a little creativity with the advertising on the envelope.

Most ad covers, or postal covers, contain a standard return address in the upper left corner that includes the essential business information of name and address (example). Some add a logo or cameo (example) to catch attention. Some add to these things information about their business or inventory (example). And some have stretched their creativity to include illustration of the cover's front, back, or both (example).

S.H. Zahm combined some of the above with a twist that is an effective eye-catching design. He chose to use a triangular shape in the lower-left portion of the cover to disseminate business information down to the point of the lower-left corner. It's finished with a decorative border.

Zahm lived from 1840 to 1892, a short 52 years by today's standards. He appears to have been an accomplished bookman and antiquarian with a successful career and a personal life beset with the tragedy of losing his wife and children to untimely deaths. Publisher's Weekly ran his obituary in their February 11, 1893 issue, which is copied below:

Samuel Hensel Zahm, head of the bookselling firm of S. H. Zahm & Co., of Lancaster, Pa.. died at Tampa, Fla., on February 5. Mr. Zahm had gone to Florida for his health on December 28 with his wife; but be was not supposed to be in a critical condition and his death was a severe shock to his relatives and friends. He was born in Lancaster, Pa., March 9, 1840. In 1875, after having been engaged in the book business in Kansas City and as travelling salesman for a Pittsburg firm, he returned to his native town and with William Reichenbach opened a small second-hand bookstore. His partner died in 1878 and Mr. Zahm formed a partnership with Samuel Auxer, under the firm-name of S. H. Zahm & Co. At that time his store was removed to 18 and 20 S Queen St., where the firm has since carried on a flourishing business. Mr. Zahm was active in municipal affairs, having been a member of the common council and the board of health. He was a charter member of the Lancaster County Historical Society and of the Pennsylvania German Society, and belonged to several other local and general organizations. He was a student and scientist, well versed in archaeology, his collection of stone implements and relics of American aborigines being a remarkably fine one, numbering many thousands of specimens. As an antiquarian and bibliophile he was regarded as an authority, being particularly well posted on Americana. He was prominently identified with the Methodist Episcopal Church of Lancaster. Mr. Zahm was twice married, his first wife and their two children having died several years ago. His second wife survives him.

Libreria Cervantes: Ricardo Veloso's Havana bookstore

2010-11-21T20:11:00.002-06:00

The two ornately designed bank drafts below, with what appears to be revenue stamps, were drawn on the account of a prominent Cuban bookseller, Ricardo Veloso, in Havana in 1920 and 1921. Each paper is approximately 5 X 9.5 inches (12.5 X 24 cm).

From the book, Havana Deco, by Alejandro G. Alonso, Pedro Contreras, and Martino Fagiuoli (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), I gleaned a few facts about Veloso and his Libreria Cervantes.

Ricardo Veloso's full name was Ricardo Veloso Guerra and he founded Libreria Cervantes in 1910. Eventually boasting the largest inventory of books in Havana, Libreria Cervantes also distinguished itself as the first bookstore in the city to sell books on credit. Veloso (Guerra is dropped in most references) also edited and published books for Cervantes. In 1926, Veloso merged his company with Cultural S.A. and they expanded their business in Cuba as well as abroad. In the process, they assumed a prominent role in Havana's literary and cultural circles.

Medical books for sale, 1884-85

2010-11-19T04:43:00.001-06:00

In a medical/surgical state of mind lately, thanks to recent orthopedic surgery, I browsed my bibliophemera collection and found a related catalog from a 19th-century bookseller to share. Further, the bookseller shares my name, albeit with a different middle initial.

Charles H. Whiting, Bookseller, of Boston (successor to Hall & Whiting, Booksellers & Stationers), offers in the 1884-85 season Catalogue No. 3: A Classified List of Medical, Surgical, Dental, Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Scientific Books. The space beneath the title was left blank for the bookseller's stamp, which led me to believe Whiting was an agent for a medical book publisher. If so, the publisher's name is nowhere to be found in this catalogue.

This compact little catalogue measures 3 by 5.5 inches (8 by 14 cm) and has 27 pages of book listings with prices. Following page 27 are several pages, including the back cover pictured above, of ads for books and student manuals.

Curious about how well-represented the field of orthopedic surgery was in this bookseller's stock in 1884, or if it was represented at all, I did find after a couple of passes through the Surgery and Surgical Cases section the book, Orthopaedic Surgery, by Sayre. Back then, you could have it for $5 cloth-bound or $6 in sheepskin.

Author Lewis A. Sayre (1820-1900) wasn't hard to find, as he's considered a founding father of orthopedic surgery in the United States and the first professor of orthopedic surgery in the US as well. The link above provides a fascinating look into one branch of surgical history. And a comparable catalogue from Charles H. Whiting today would likely go many more pages than its 1884-85 counterpart and include a better selection on orthopedic surgery.

Travelling Bookshop in Freetown

2010-11-17T04:12:00.002-06:00

It's been awhile since a bookmobile rolled though this blog, but here comes one now--the C.M.S. Travelling Bookshop from Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa.

C.M.S. stands for Church Missionary Society, founded in London in 1799. They didn't take long to get to Sierra Leone, just five years later in 1804 with their first overseas mission work.

I don't know when the book shop got started, nor when they put their books on wheels to reach more folks, but this postcard appears to depict an early 1960s bookmobile. A note on the back indicates the pictured vehicle has been replaced. And, from scouring the Web, there appears to be a network of CMS book shops across the many countries where the Society is active.

Perhaps there is no need, or maybe no budget, for CMS bookmobiles today, but judging by the crowd gathering in the postcard image, there definitely was a need some fifty years ago.

The Booksellers' League of New York

2010-11-16T09:07:00.003-06:00

An early booksellers' association in America was The Booksellers' League of New York, founded in 1895. Princeton University Library has a collection of related ephemera in their Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscripts Division. I have one item in my collection, a copy of which may also exist in those archives: An announcement for the 1936 Annual Dinner and Dance of the Booksellers' League at the Aldine Club.

Thomas Wolf was a featured speaker at the dinner that evening, which gives perspective to the level of quality and character of the organization.

As my surgically-repaired (last week) right arm is currently useless, and left-handed typing is s-l-o-w, I'll just include here a couple of Booksellers' League history excerpts from two reliable sources.

The Princeton Library site offers the following history of the league in support of its collection:

Founded in 1895, the Booksellers' League of New York was an organization aimed at promoting a professional and collaborative spirit among members of the book trade. Its founding officers were J. N. Wing of Charles Scribner's Sons, A. Growoll of Publishers' Weekly, and C. E. Savage, of G. P. Putnam's Sons. The League organized social events related to the profession, most notably monthly dinners with invited speakers and an annual banquet. It also sponsored an employment bureau and lectures related to the interests of book professionals. Originally a men's-only club, the League first admitted women in 1949.

Bookseller Rulon-Miller's catalog number 141, offers a listing of league ephemera and a nice bit of history that complements what I found on the Princeton site.

307. BOOKSELLERS’ LEAGUE. Archive. New York: 1895–1950s... This archive is ex-Aaron Mendoza (of the Isaac Mendoza Book Co., NYC, and President of the League in 1944–45), and thence ex-Jacob Chernofsky, editor of AB Bookman’s Weekly. Includes 5 small quarto notebooks containing the minutes and expenditures of the League, covering the year of the League’s founding in 1895 to 1930, in various hands, and with numerous printed and in-house mimeograph slips pasted in. Among the presidents of the League during these years were Alfred Growoll, B. W. Huebsch, R. E. Sherwood, and Arthur Brentano, and among the secretaries recording the minutes were Charles A. Burkhardt, A. Growell, W. H. Parker, E. W. Johnson, Francis Gilman, A. G. Seiler, William S. McKeachie, A. W. Wessels, and others, pro tem.

The Booksellers’ League was the first organization of its kind in the United States. Not only did the League seek to develop a true spirit of fraternity and mutual help among booksellers and publishers, it also sponsored an Employment Bureau, a Booksellers’ School, and a lecture series. The list of those involved in the Booksellers’ League covers virtually every major publishing firm in the New York area (Harpers, Dutton, Putnam, Knopf, Fleming Revell, B. W. Huebsch, Edward Burt, W. R. Barnes, and many of these names are punctuated by the names of authors who attended meetings and gave lectures, including Sherwood Anderson, Zane Gray, Robert Sherwood, Alfred Noyes, Joseph C. Lincoln, Ellis Parker Butler, Bennet Cerf, and others.

A treasure trove of the New York publishing and bookselling scene during its heyday.

And I was pleased to find a little piece of ephemeral treasure and learn about this pioneering and venerable organization for bibliophiles.

The Holman Exhibit: Printing Art in Texas

2010-11-04T22:06:00.003-05:00

Fairly fresh off the press is my latest piece of book-related ephemera--an announcement for the opening of the exhibit: Printing Art in Texas: The William and Barbara Holman Collection of Design and Fine Printing.

The exhibit will run from November 5th to December 31st, 2010 at the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M University and will feature the works of Bill and Barbara Holman, including books, broadsides, proofs and printing blocks, and correspondence covering a sixty-year collaboration in fine printing and the book arts.

One of the books I'm guessing will be featured is a copy of the one below, which I used as a backdrop for the announcement card photos above. It's titled Library Publications, written by William R. Holman, with a Foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell. Barbara Holman designed the book and it was published by Roger Beacham (the Holman imprint), in 1965. It's a beautiful example of their collaborative, creative work that will be on display at Cushing Memorial Library and an important addition to the archives there.

Not even a distal tendon rupture of my right bicep could possibly keep me away... but the surgical repair next week will likely keep me from posting on the blogs for awhile. Hopefully, I'll be back this month, maybe December. And I hope to have some ephemera from the Holman exhibit to show off. Until then...

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Quick update on the Holman exhibit, 11/05/2010... a beautiful day in College Station, Texas on the Texas A&M University campus today. And the Cushing Memorial Library created a beautiful exhibit for the Holmans' collection now in their archives. No additional print ephemera to report on, but here's a digital photo of the exhibit, with Bill Holman, center, talking to a couple about the materials in one of the exhibit cases.

Books for Boys and Girls in Goshen, Indiana

2010-10-27T08:19:00.039-05:00

The News Book Store in Goshen, Indiana had this Rand McNally children's book guide printed for them with the front cover of the stapled booklet customized to feature their business name. There is no date, but the time period appears to be circa 1920s-30s. A quick check for first or early Rand McNally printings of a sampling of these books confirms that time period.

The complete title of the guide is Books for Boys and Girls with Guide for Selection. The first page in the guide serves as the title page and contents page and indicates Rand McNally as the publisher of all the books listed. Click here to see another piece of Rand McNally ephemera I featured on this blog, which includes a very brief history of the company.

A brief description of this guide is also found on the first page, stating:

Rand McNally books for boys and girls have been especially selected and edited by competent and experienced editors and educators for the entertainment, inspiration, and education of children during their most impressionable years.

The pitch goes on to add a few words about the art work that illustrates their books:

And the illustrations, made by artists of recognizable ability, are not only a delight in themselves, but they also stimulate a taste for good art.

Following are samples of the books available and examples of the accompanying art.

Wondering if The News Book Store in Goshen left any trace of its existence that could be found via an Internet search, I did just that and found the following: A Standard History of Elkhart County, Indiana (1916) indicates The News Book Store was owned by the local newspaper, which also established a bookbinding office and a job printing office. Several addresses are indicated for the book store and its parent company, none of which match the address on the Rand McNally guide, but after a 1914 fire, the newspaper plant and job printing offices were rebuilt and the book store sold.

Perhaps contradicting this timeline somewhat is a Publisher's Weekly report from 1911 that indicates that parent company stockholder Mr. Grant Himes bought all interest in the book store before the fire and ran it independent of the other operations. After the fire three years later, Himes had to have been the one to sell the book store. It must have continued under the same name until at least the time of the Rand McNally guide. At some point after the fire, presumably, The News Book Store wound up at 130 South Main Street.

If you do a Google maps search of that address and select the satellite view, you'll see that the business does not exist at that address and perhaps does not exist at all anywhere by any name. What's interesting, though, is the business down the street--another bookseller you may have heard about recently: Better World Books, a company with an innovative approach to the bookselling business. They're located just off South Main Street in Goshen. And if you look back at that Google map, you'll see that a few blocks down South Main Street is the Goshen News, which very well could be the descendant of the old News Printing Company, which once owned The News Book Store that sold the Rand McNally books in the Books for Boys and Girls guide.

The End.

Bookplates for Libraries

2010-10-12T22:53:00.001-05:00

Going through my Holman Archives of donated ephemera recently, I came across a set of promotional pieces for a 1968 Roger Beacham (Bill Holman's imprint) publication: Bookplates for Libraries, by Edward Hampton Shickell.

I recalled reading a post on the Library History Buff blog about the book and thought these items would provide a tie-in from the printed ephemera angle. Included here in this "prospectus package" are an announcement, a brochure, and a piece featuring William R. Holman's Introduction to the book. Each has a distinct job to do for promoting the book, but collectively they function as a prospectus.

First up is the announcement of the book and a pre-publication offer. The oblong design opens to nearly twenty inches in length, features a brief description of the book and author, and examples of four bookplates accompanied by this statement about the book: A reference work which answers every librarian's need for appropriate and well designed bookplates.

The next piece in this trio is a 10 by 14-inch sheet folded to effect a four-page sampling of bookplate designs, accompanied by William R. Holman's Introduction for the book, titled An approach to contemporary library bookplates. I like the answer to his opening question, Why bookplates for libraries? And I think his answer is applicable to personal as well as public libraries:

There is something so eternal and everlasting about the bookplates--they not only lend dignity and grace to a library's collection but they attest to man's belief in, and love of, the printed word.

The last piece of advertising for Bookplates for Libraries is a tri-fold brochure with the front cover about half the size of the other pages in width, with an aesthetically pleasing ragged edge. Equal amounts of space are dedicated to Donald Dickinson's review and more examples of the bookplates that represent the content of the book.

Each piece of ephemera comprising this prospectus combo has a particular function in promoting the book and their coordinated design sets the proper tone for one of the core themes of the book, which Dickinson echoed in his review:

The volume itself is a convincing argument of the thoughtful combination of type, ink and paper.

And that's what you get with these three examples of promotional ephemera--the thoughtful combination of type, ink and paper.

Read more about book prospectuses at the always excellent The Private Library blog, where L.D. Mitchell has written The Prospectus and the Private Library

Northern bookseller, Southern lawyer: Civil War to civil business

2010-10-01T13:15:00.002-05:00

During America's Civil War, Charles Carroll Soule of Boston joined the 44th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment to fight for the North. John W. Park, of prominent Southern heritage, joined the Confederate cause, signing up with the Regimental Staff of the 1st Georgia Reserves. It is doubtful that their paths ever crossed on the battlefield, but they did cross about a quarter-century later in a business transaction involving books.

Charles C. Soule, a Harvard graduate, became a bookseller sometime after the war and was the proprietor of the Boston Book Company. John W. Park became a prominent lawyer and was one of the organizers of the Georgia Bar association and eventually served as its president. In those professional capacities, these two accomplished men would cross paths because of their chosen fields after the fields of battle. I have evidence of this in the correspondence below.

On September 6th, 1890, Soule wrote to Park about a credit to his account and enclosed a list of second-hand books from which he could choose a title or two. What kind of books did Soule sell that Park could have been interested in? As stated earlier, Park was a prominent lawyer, so it was no surprise to learn that Soule specialized in law books.

The Southern lawyer and the Northern bookseller had a business relationship to the extent that Mr. Park had an account with Mr. Soule's company. These former Civil War opponents had become businessmen conducting civil transactions with one another. Park needed certain law books and he found them in Boston from a former adversary in the War Between the States.

But Soule not only sold law books, he authored The Lawyer's Reference Manual of Law Books and Citations. He was highly regarded for his knowledge and views on law books and law publishing, as indicated in this letter to the American Law Reviews. No wonder John Park looked North for his law book needs.

Soule's professional interests extended to libraries as well. On that subject, Soule authored Library Rooms and Buildings and How to Plan a Library Building for Library Work. While not a professional librarian, Soule was active in the American Library Association, having become a member in 1870.

Beyond the business transaction of the bookseller Soule noted here, I found some interesting history from Soule's military service. This citation offers minimal biographical information, but does substantiate that he was indeed Captain of the 55th Massachusetts. In my research, I had run across a Charles C. Soule who authored a letter at the close of the Civil War to a Maj. General O.O. Howard concerning the chaos created between freed slaves and Southern planters. A reference to his position of Captain of the 55th Massachusetts, a black regiment, confirmed this was this same Charles C. Soule who would become author-publisher-bookseller Soule.

His accomplishments extended beyond the world of books and into equality and civil law in the wake of emancipation, as can be seen in Soule's correspondence with Maj. General Howard, found at the University of Maryland’s Department of History project: Freedmen & Southern Society Project.

During the war, with the preservation of the United States at stake, it is interesting to ponder if either Charles C. Soule or John W. Park could have foreseen that out of a Civil War there could evolve a civil business relationship between two opponents in the arenas of culture, geography, and military allegiance. Of course, history records that such relationships did evolve, as evidenced by major documents and even little bits of ephemera such as a note between two men about books.

Vintage Japanese paper handbill

2010-09-15T18:23:00.000-05:00

This is one of my more unusual pieces and I'm not sure what to call it--handbill, broadside, flyer... A rose by any other name and all that, it's beautiful regardless of labels.

This ad for publisher and bookseller Suzando T. Aoki dates to circa 1900, as I have found a few references to books published by Aoki in the 1900-1905 date range. It measures nearly a foot in length (28 cm).

The paper appears to be hand painted, though I can't say for certain. I'm way outside my knowledge base on this one. And the paper is something you have to hold and feel to appreciate the fibrous texture and quality. It's almost like a fabric.

The Japanese Paper Place shares some history on traditional Japanese paper, called Washi, which I'm guessing Aoki selected more than a hundred years ago as the appropriate medium for this advertisement for his books.

After perusing the history of Washi, if Japanese paper needs more superlatives, this article titled, The Art of Japanese Paper will help out to that effect with quotes such as,

"Japanese paper seems to match the beautiful interiors of the buildings. It is almost a form of architecture."

and

"The Japanese believe that papermaking is from the soul. It's not a job, it's an art."

On this handbill's section of English text, Aoki advertises what appears to be a fine selection of books and art.

I can't think of a better way for a bookseller to make a statement about his fine books and art than with an advertising piece that is itself a work of art. But around the time this piece was crafted, some 100,000 Japanese artisans practiced the papermaking art. As of the 2002 article referenced above, those ranks had diminished to a mere 400 or so.

With today's market commanding up to several hundred dollars for a single sheet of paper (per the 2002 article), it's doubtful today's bookseller or publisher would want to put in an order for ephemeral advertising pieces such as Aoki's handbill, which seems like the higher end variety. Thankfully, Aoki was able to use handmade paper and this piece survived beyond its intended use.

William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection

2010-09-09T20:28:00.006-05:00

I heard today from Gregg Silvis at the University of Delaware Library, who had seen my post about John Stuart Groves' bookplate and Delawareana. He thought their digital bookplate collection, William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection, would be of interest to readers on this blog. It certainly was to me. In addition to the bookplate collection, try the University of Delaware Library Digital Collections link and have fun with that visual feast of history.

This also ties in neatly with something else I wrote earlier this year, some thoughts on digital ephemera, after receiving a digital copy of a bookplate.

Quoting from the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection, here' the scoop on William Augustus Brewer and his wonderful collection:

Reverend William Augustus Brewer was an avid bookplate collector. His wife, Augusta LaMotte Brewer, bequeathed his collection to the University of Delaware Library after her husband’s death. The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection comprises 12,680 printed bookplates dating mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collection includes bookplates from the libraries of John Carter Brown, Lewis Carroll, Samuel L. Clemens, Calvin Coolidge, Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, Edward Gibbon, Alexander Hamilton, Harry Houdini, Samuel Pepys, Howard Pyle, Paul Revere, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Stieglitz and William Butler Yeats, as well as many others. The designers of the bookplates include Thomas Bewick, Edward Burne-Jones, Kate Greenaway, William Hogarth, Howard Pyle, Rudolf Ruzicka, and James A. M. Whistler. Subjects illustrated in the bookplates are varied, inclucing birds, death’s heads, medicine, music, rebuses, and portraits of historical and literary figures.

The William Augustus Brewer Digital Bookplate Collection currently contains 3,040 of these bookplates, with the remaining 10,000 to be added in 2011.

Thank you, Gregg!

Bruce Rogers book prospectus

2010-09-08T12:48:00.000-05:00

Back in June, I wrote about a 1957 Book Club of California prospectus for a forthcoming book that year about Mark Twain. This prospectus was one item in a batch of ephemera that Bill Holman gave to me for my ephemera collection.

For this post, I've gone back to that folder of ephemera and have selected another prospectus from the Book Club of California: BR: A Panel Discussion of the Bruce Rogers Centenary held at Purdue University by Harry Duncan, K.K. Merker and Ward Ritchie (1981).

There's more, but I'm still organizing and studying what I have, as time permits. I'm also acquiring similar ephemera directly from the Book Club of California, as I am now a member thanks to Mr. Holman's recommendation and sponsorship. The ephemera from this club have become quite collectible over the years, such as announcements, prospectuses, invitations, and other pieces, which are themselves beautiful examples of design and fine printing.

One of the greatest book designers, if not the greatest (which many will contend), of the twentieth century was Bruce Rogers, an Indiana native who lived from 1870 to 1957. He was graduated from Purdue University, where a centennial conference was held in 1970 to commemorate his life and work with typography, printing, and book design.

Among his many accomplishments highlighted in the book's prospectus above were his design of the Centaur font, the Lectern Bible he designed for the Oxford Press, and his design work for the Riverside Press.

The Purdue conference included a panel discussion between Harry Duncan, K.K. Merker, and Ward Ritchie, all accomplished and recognized printers in their own right. Ward Ritchie actually knew Bruce Rogers, so he was able to contribute personal memories to the discussion.

A decade later, the Book Club of California, according to the prospectus for BR, found the transcribed discussion so interesting that they arranged for its publication in book format. The prospectus continues with a brief biography of the panelists and information about the publication of the book. The book was designed by Ward Ritchie and ran over 64 pages with several illustrations of Bruce Rogers' designs. Limited to 600 copies, the book was priced at $20.

What is interesting and ironic about this prospectus for a book that pays tribute to a revered giant of the book arts is the lack of print quality. To the casual eye, it might not be noticeable upon first glance. "Casual eye" does not apply to expert printer and designer, Bill Holman, who of course caught the flawed type and was puzzled about the poor presswork of this piece. He noted his observation in pencil in the upper right corner of the front of the piece:

See interior. Very poor presswork or was this a proof copy or? WRH 5/12/81

See for yourself below.

Click on image to enlarge

Bookish swap cards

2010-09-06T15:39:00.000-05:00

This Labor Day entry is a stretch for staying within the scope of this blog's content. But in honor of the holiday, no labor--let's play cards.

Just when I think I've found all the different kinds of paper collectible relating to books, another one pops up. Swap cards. These are single playing cards out of a regular 52-card deck (plus jokers). I didn't know there was a name for this collectible. Nor did I didn't know that single cards were all that collectible, except for the truly antique.

Although I have picked up a few here and there because of certain subjects portrayed on the card, it only recently dawned on me to look for book-themed cards. I'm late to the game, but deal me in.

The swap cards that introduced me to this new world of collectibles are pictured below. Two cards from what appears to be companion decks, because of the color variation, contain an image of an Antebellum-looking couple browsing books through a shop window.

The next set, two cards again, possibly from the same deck, feature old books on bookshelves.

There you have it--my inauspicious beginning to the world of swap cards. I'll keep an eye out for more, but I don't think I'll put a lot of labor into it.

Following are links that delve into the world of swap cards:

Collecting Swap Cards

Swap Cards - Storage and Display

Other Branches of Swap Card Collecting

Swap Cards - Terminology

The Flying Bookseller in Berlin

2010-09-01T12:59:00.002-05:00

This postcard depicts a German bookseller's wagon, or cart, on a Berlin Street around the turn of the 20th century, likely a bit before 1900. The back of the postcard, which may be a later issue, labels the photo "Der fliegende Buchhändler."

I knew Buchhändler was bookseller, but I had to look up fliegende, which translates to flying, i.e., Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), the famous opera by Richard Wagner.

By fliegende or flying, it is meant that this bookselling business was portable and mobile. It could move freely about to accommodate buyers in various areas of town or the countryside. Gustav Kauffmann, according to the sign off the end of the cart, owned and operated this German "Parnassus on Wheels," which appears to have made the rounds in a Berlin business district. It also looks like Herr Kauffmann is parked outside a restaurant that serves a selection of beer from the Kindle Brewery (advertising above window, visible in the first photo), which is still in business today.

Today, there is another German bookselling business that uses Kauffmann's nickname for their company: Der Fliegende Buchhändler. There's a bit of twist to their business, though. They appear to move "book tables" around their town (Karlsruhe) and region to accommodate sales at events and other settings for various publishers.

1897 billhead for homeopathic publisher-bookseller

2010-08-28T16:49:00.003-05:00

Boericke & Tafel is among the oldest homeopathy companies in the world and a pioneer of homeopathy in America.

The company got started in 1853 with the manufacture and sales of homeopathy products. A decade later, the company was firmly rooted in major cities across the country. They also added publisher and bookseller to their business description.

Not only did the company become leading "Homeopathy Pharmaceutists," it also established itself as a leading publisher of homeopathy books. The 1897 billhead above states in smaller print beneath the company name: Publishers of Homeopathic Books and Importers of Homeopathic Literature.

I can't offer any information about the literature they imported for their books sales, but their own published books (more than a hundred titles, comprised their catalog) accounted for about eighty-five percent of all homeopathic books published in the United States. Some of these titles included The American Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, The Sixth Edition of Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine (translated by William Boericke), and Boericke's Materia Medica with Repertory, which, according to Homeopathe International, "is today the standard U.S. materia medica and an integral part of most homeopathic computer repertorization programs." That bit of Boericke & Tafel company history comes from Sylvain Cazalet, whose articles, history, and images are a great Internet resource on the subject.

The company rode a wave of popularity for homeopathy in the 19th century. The 20th century saw a decline in that popularity, but Boericke & Tafel survived and is still kicking in the 21st century as a brand of Schwabe Pharmaceuticals of Germany.

Cosmic Aeroplane Bookstore & Headshop

2010-08-27T08:30:00.001-05:00

Here's a relic from those heady (pun intended) counterculture days of the 1960s-70s when headshops appeared on the scene. I remember one close to where I grew up that was called a record shop, but it was a headshop, too. As a teenager circa 1969-1972, my memories of that place were incense, paraphernalia that had nothing to do with music (or perhaps it did in an enhancement kind of way), hippie-looking staff and patrons, and some really cool records. I got introduced to the music of Townes Van Zandt there with his 1972 album, The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. But I digress.

Getting back to that other headshop... In a Salt Lake magazine article by John Pecorelli, a brief history of the Cosmic Aeroplane credits Stephen Jones with opening the business in 1967 as a headshop (the first in Salt Lake City, I'm sure). According to the article, the Cosmic Aeroplane developed a loyal counterculture following:

While Jones’ Cosmic Aeroplane was a good place to find out about bands coming Utah and purchase “imported beads and bells from San Francisco,” the shop, originally located on 900 E. and 900 S., provided a rallying point for Utah’s expanding consciousness until its closure in 1991. Books, used records, underground comix and dope paraphernalia were available, and with a move to larger digs, the Aeroplane opened an experimental theater in back (the Human Ensemble, then featuring KSL news fixture Shelley Osterloh). The larger space also accommodated a draft counseling center run by Hal Sparck, who had frequent legal wrangles with the Selective Service as a result, but always prevailed.

I don't know if books were part of the mix when the place opened, or if they were gradually introduced into the shop's inventory, but in 1977 two new business partners ensured its legacy as a bookstore. Bruce Roberts and rare book dealer Ken Sanders provided an infusion of cash and expertise in books to help the shop blossom into a million-dollar business (at least one year reportedly).

This trade card or business card may be from the Roberts-Sanders era, as the address given is 366 South West Temple and the original location, stated in the quoted passage above, was elsewhere. Regardless, its ancestry boasts of vintage 1960s. But nothing lasts forever. By 1991 the Salt Lake City icon of counterculture and subversive literature and music met its demise, reported here in the Deseret News.

Philadelphia booksellers and bibliophiles

2010-08-25T09:12:00.001-05:00

My last post was about a Philadelphia bookseller, John Penington & Son, whose 1875 trade card I had recently acquired. A few months ago, I had purchased a copy of Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia with Biographical and Bibliographical Remarks, by W. Brotherhead (published by A.P. Brotherhead, Philadelphia, 1891).

Affixed to the book's endpapers, I found a couple of paper items I like to feature here occasionally--a bookplate and a bookseller's ticket, or label.

Inside the book's front cover (front pastedown), I see this book formerly was a volume in the private library of H.S. Pickering, so stated by his straightforward, no-frills bookplate:

Of H.S. Pickering and books or libraries there is nothing to be found through repeated searches. There was a man by that name who wrote a book about covalent something or rather, but I doubt that was my Pickering with the bookplate. My Pickering would be more appropriate as a relation to the Pickering of the Pickering & Chatto antiquarian booksellers, but I can't find any connection there.

If not associated with the bookseller, perhaps he was a committee member for the The English Association, for which there was an H.S. Pickering.

Venturing farther away from the book world, maybe this H.S. Pickering was the wealthy Bostonian, Harry Pickering (middle initial unknown), of Harry's Bar fame in Italy (and around the world now). Was Harry a bibliophile who picked up a second-hand copy of Brotherhead's book (he hadn't been born yet when it was published)? That would make for a good story and be of more general interest.

For the "H" in H.S. Pickering, I've substituted Henry, Harold, Harry, Horton, on and on through Hubert, Hugh, and Humphrey to no avail. Names turn up, but nothing associated with bookselling or book collecting or libraries. Whomever the elusive H.S. was, he was interested in old Philadelphia booksellers and had a structured library to the point that his books contained a bookplate identifying the book by a number.

Additional provenance on this book was found on the rear endpapers in the form of a bookseller ticket or label affixed to the rear pastedown. McGirr's State House Book Shop of Philadelphia once had this book in its possession and sold it somewhere along the line.

As McGirr's is not listed in Brotherhead's book about booksellers in Philadelphia, I assume that the book shop did not exist prior to 1891. I have found references to around 1917. Beyond that, I know virtually nothing about the book shop's history, but a bit of information on the proprietor follows.

I first became familiar with Newman F. McGirr of McGirr's State House Book Shop last year when researching a post card from McGirr's. That post is HERE, but an extracted passage from that post offers the following on McGirr:

McGirr appears to have been, in addition to a bookseller, a writer, editor, and publisher (thus my comparison to fellow Philadelphian Franklin). I can find several references to works of folklore, particularly in Pennsylvania, that he was involved with. And more particularly, he had a special interest in music history of the region. I could also venture a guess that he was somewhat of a songcatcher, a Lomax contemporary, who had at one time his own record label.

I did find mention of a book he wrote, which I have to get for my library: Experiences of a Pennsylvanian with Old Books, Bibliophiles and Old Records. I can't find anything more than the title and author (McGirr) and it seems to be long out-of-print and unavailable.

John Penington, Philadelphia bookseller

2010-08-21T10:37:00.008-05:00

Carl Spitzweg's painting, Der Bücherwurm (The Bookworm), has been used by many booksellers to sell books and by many bibliophiles to decorate a library or reading room. My own library's walls are pretty much obstructed by tall bookcases, but the little wall space left for art includes a framed print of The Bookworm. So it came as no surprise to find an image of the famous painting on an old Philadelphia bookseller's trade card. What was somewhat surprising was the copyright date on the card: 1875.

I erroneously remembered The Bookworm was painted about that time and found it interesting that it had been adopted so quickly by a bookseller. I was off by 25 years, but 1875 may have still been early in the use of this image among bookmen. This is the earliest commercial use of it I have in my ephemera collection, anyway.

This trade card features a knock-off of Spitzweg's creation. The Penington name has been added and the section the old bibliophile is browsing is titled something like "Euonka." I can't tell what that is, but it is substituted for Spitzweg's "Metaphysik." The reverse side kicks off the proprietor's message with "Old, Rare and Quaint Books," followed by the the establishment's name and address. A description of their books and wants rounds out the information on the business side of the card, emphasizing various languages and European books. Their taste in foreign languages must account for the category of books in the image that I've yet to decipher. The descriptive message concludes with this incentive:

The most Fastidious Taste of the Erudite and Curious may be gratified in their "Rare, Old Book Shop."

It dawned on me, as I looked at the card, that a recent addition to my library might shed more light on this John Penington and his business history. I have a copy now of Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia with Biographical and Bibliographical Remarks, by W. Brotherhead (published by A.P. Brotherhead, Philadelphia, 1891).

Penington is included in this history, but the author spells his name with a double "n." I'm going with the trade card spelling. I have to assume the card was done to Penington's specifications and approved before printing. I have also found some genealogical information to support that (included further down in this post).

Brotherhead comments briefly on John Penington's background, describing him of old Quaker stock, well-educated, a French scholar, and a collector of books, with particular taste in the belle lettres class of books. With his own substantial collection, he entered into business as a bookseller, opening his own book shop after a presumably unrewarding stint as a clerk in the Custom House.

At this point, I think the history behind Penington's book shop gets pretty interesting because of the clientele that called on the Philadelphia bookseller. They were primarily wealthy southerners, slaveholders of the plantation aristocracy.

Through his disdain for the history of slavery in America, Brotherhead reveals a thinly veiled opinion of southerners. But he finds a redeeming characteristic in the "literary Augustan age of the South:"

Let it be said to the credit of these men that they cultivated the hereditary literary instincts of their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. The money made from the work of these slaves was haughtily and grandly spent in educating their children in the best schools of Europe. The sons were trained for the various professions, and the most accomplished teacher that Europe could furnish were employed for their higher education. The results were that in proportion to their population, the Southerners produced a class of men, both in numbers and general culture, that far exceeded those in the Middle and Eastern States. The history of the country shows that, up to 1860, when the Rebellion broke out in its greatest Ferocity, the South, in both the Congress and the Senate, shows a greater galaxy of brilliant men than all the rest of the States combined. However censurable and questionable this mode of government may be considered by many, it cannot be denied that it produced a class of men always to be admired by the literary student, that we in the North have as yet to produce.

Brotherhead provides this history to establish the background of Penington's chief patrons. This cultivated Southern class always called on Penington, it seems, when on business in the east. Penington seems to have cornered the market on imported books from Europe, which, according to Brotherhead, the Southern literati craved.

When the Civil War (Rebellion) commenced, Penington lost a sizable portion of his customers and never recaptured the luster of the pre-War days. John Penington died in 1867, a few years after the war ended and the business passed to his son E. Penington (the copyright name on the trade card). As of Brotherhead's writing, 1891, the business had passed to the son of E. Penington. I can only assume the bookselling firm limped into the 20th century, a shadow of its former venerable-bookseller self.

Brotherhead laments the loss of the esteemed business that made Philadelphia the center for imported works of literature during the period 1800-1860. He claims New York booksellers began adopting the importation model for both literature and engravings and "robbed" Philadelphia of the noble reputation it once boasted.

I have to wonder how New York managed to recapture the market after the war and Philadelphia didn't. Beyond my limited knowledge of the history of the two cities and the factors involved in their literary development before and after the war, I would think it may have had something to do with the quality of Penington, the bookseller, and the lack of qualified successors in his city. I'll have to read the rest of Brotherhead's history of the old booksellers of Philadelphia to see if any clues turn up there. There seems to be something about New York after the war that cultivated more booksellers in the mold of John Penington.

Earlier, I alluded to the Penington genealogy. I learned form a Chester County Historical Society document on old families of Philadelphia that the Penington name was once spelled with two "n's," but had dropped one of them along the way. More importantly, I learned that John Penington came by his love of literature and book collecting rightfully.

His father, Edward Penington, "was possessed of literary tastes, and was the owner of a library comprising over 6000 volumes." John Penington was his oldest son and "had a national reputation as a scholar, antiquary and bibliophile. Upon his death, The Nation, eulogized him as "the last, if not the only American bookseller who represented the old traditional bookseller," and added this lofty assessment of his life:

A scholar of fine parts, thorough in his knowledge of bookselling, with judgement and skill, a biographer in its broadest and best sense he was an honor to the craft, and he took pride in it. He was a man of fine taste, of large reading, and of exhaustless service to all who were curious in scholarship or earnest in the study of letters... His shop became the gathering place of scholars and men with taste for letters, and one generation after another grew up almost under his eyes in the various branches of literature which he supplied…The trade of bookselling in his hands was elevated to the dignity that it really acquires in the hands of competent men. Such men are rare everywhere.

Brotherhead concluded his chapter on John Penington, stating that after his demise and uneventful succession of family owners of his business, Penington's name and by implication the literary reputation of Philadelphia booksellers also passed away:

...the halo of old John Pennington has passed away, and his fine old store and name, except to a few, is sunk into oblivion.

Perhaps the discovery of a 135-year-old trade card for the book shop has raised the memory of John Penington, Bookseller from the depths of oblivion, if only momentarily.

Harry Gave 'Em Hell

2010-08-13T08:57:00.002-05:00

Tucked inside the front cover of a copy of The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman, edited by Robert H. Ferrell (Colorado Associated University Press, 1980), I found a presentation note from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute. The implicit invitation it contained led me to some of Truman's private thoughts, which reinforced the slogan often associated with him:" "Give 'em Hell, Harry!"

The letter implies the book was a complimentary copy for another library or institute of higher learning and invites the reader to promote and encourage public understanding of the Truman period.

Taking some direction from that typed note, I thought I'd first go poke around in the Harry S. Truman Library Institute. I quickly found it doesn't exist under that name these days. Now, it is properly referred to as the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

At the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum site, I clicked on the Research link and found under Special Features a link to Truman's 1947 Diary. Old diaries can be interesting to peruse, especially for high profile individuals such as ex-presidents. I got a lot more candor than I bargained for while reading Truman's diary.

Below are some excerpts from the diary he kept that year.

Excerpt from January 3rd on presidential progeny:

Mrs. Roosevelt came in at 3 P.M. to assure me that Jimmy & Elliott had nothing against me and intended no disparagement of me in their recent non-edited remarks. Said she was for me. Said she didn't like Byrnes and was sure he was not reporting Elliott correctly. Said Byrnes was always for Byrnes and no one else. I wonder! He's been loyal to me[.] In the Senate he gave me my first small appropriation, which started the Special Committee to investigate the National Defense Program on its way. He'd probably have done me a favor if he'd refused to give it.

Maybe there was something on both sides in this situation. It is a pity a great man has to have progeny! Look at Churchill's. Remember Lincoln's and Grant's. Even in collateral branches Washington's wasn't so good-and Teddy Roosevelt's are terrible.

Truman makes note of a heart condition in his March 7th entry and scoffs, "So What!

"Left Mexico City at 6 A.M. Everyone[,] President, Cabinet, half the City to see me off.

Land at Waco in the rain at 11 A.M.

Doc tell's [sic] me I have Cardiac Asthma! Ain[']t that hell.
Well it makes no diff[erence,] will go on as before. I've sworn him to secrecy! So What!

Excerpt from July 4th after a visit to Jefferson's home, Monticello:

Mrs. Astor-Lady Astor came to the car just before we started from Monticello to say to me that she liked my policies as President but that she thought I had become rather too much "Yankee."

I couldn't help telling her that my purported "Yankee" tendencies were not half so bad as her ultra conservative British leanings. She almost had a stroke.

July 23rd, Truman comments on the departure of Secretray of War Patterson and his wife, as well as his dislike for the wife of his replacement:

How we'll miss Mrs. Patterson! as well as the Sec[retary] of War. Looks as if we've lost a grand, honest man & wife of the same caliber and have gained a good man and a baby talking, henna haired lady. She went to school with Claire Booth Luce-too bad I'd say. Cabinet women are a problem. I'll write a book on it some day.

I've saved the most surprising (shocking) for last, a July 21st anti-semitic rant after a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, concerning a ship in Palestine:

The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

Wow! When the diary was discovered in 2003 and made available to the public online, any media coverage slipped by me. I don't remember hearing anything about it. I wondered how others viewed the July 21st entry and how it might affect Truman's legacy. I found a couple of points of view on the matter, one of which defends Truman against anti-semitism:

http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=320

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2503

There are many more for researchers and historians to debate. I don't know that I would have ever had any knowledge of Truman's diary and its contents had I not found a letter from his Presidential Library tucked inside his autobiography. More evidence of ephemera's collectibility and importance in discovering history.

Houghton Mifflin Bookcards

2010-08-07T17:10:00.002-05:00

I found this card in a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood (Houghton Mifflin, 1985). You might recall the 1990 film version starring Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duval, among others.

The book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, labels this insert a bookcard, but it was meant to be used as a postcard.

While the front of the bookcard duplicates the jacket art from the book, the reverse side contains a written nudge, in a perforated area, to send this card to a friend if you enjoyed the book.

As this is the first one I've run across, I wonder if this were a short-lived promotional campaign for this or a few select books? I also wonder how many were issued and what percentage were actually used? While it's nice to have this piece of ephemera fully intact, I'd also like to come across some used cards with reader comments.

I did a little quick research, using Abebooks.com's Advance Search feature, which allows you to narrow your search by publisher and date range, as well as key words. I used them all and also selected 1st Edition and Hardcover, thinking that Houghton Mifflin may have inserted these cards only in their first print run of a book.

My initial search resulted in just eight books with bookcards included, three of which were The Handmaid's Tale. The remaining five books included one duplicate. The publication dates of these books ranged from 1984-1986.

I was about to conclude (reasonably enough) that Houghton Mifflin printed these bookcards only for that time period, but I decided to expand the range to make sure I had covered the actual period these cards were issued. I changed the date range to an exaggerated 1850-2010. Only one more book popped up in the results, a spoof of Gone With the Wind, titled The Wind Done Gone (2001). So now we have a range spanning 1984 to 2001, with most books lumped together from 1984-1986 and one sitting way out at 2001.

I'm reasonably sure these promotional bookcards were issued only during the time period I found--1980s through the early 2000s. As with subscription ads inserted into magazines, perhaps many of these bookcards just got trashed after the book was purchased.

Rand, McNally & Co. billhead

2010-08-03T07:45:00.000-05:00

Think of Rand McNally and you think of maps and road atlases. But they got their start in the 1850s as printers and publishers of newspapers and railroad ephemera such as tickets and timetables.

Their company name reflected two individuals, their names separated by a comma, as shown in the billhead above, dated 1900 (New York office). Research into this billhead also revealed how a well-known American publisher adapted to adversity and changing times for more than a century to thrive in an increasingly competitive business environment.

William Rand started a small printing business in Chicago in 1856, offering his job printing services for a variety of items. A few years later, he hired Irish immigrant Andrew McNally to help with his growing business.

A Chicago newspaper, forerunner to the Chicago Tribune, hired both in 1859 to run their printing shop. A decade later, the pair had purchased the printing operations from the newspaper and struck out on their own.

But the company nearly lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. They managed to rescue a couple of ticket printing machines and buried them in the ground several miles away to escape the intense heat. This saved the business and they were able to resume printing within days in a rented space.

The next year, 1872, Rand and McNally began turning their printing focus to the booming railroad industry in Chicago, for which they printed their first map in that year. Thus began their association with publishing maps and later educational materials.

Rand sold his interest in the business in 1899, but the company name remained intact and the McNally family continued running the business for nearly another century until Andrew McNally IV sold the company in 1997. By that time, the company name had become synonymous with maps and road atlases, which they developed along with the country's automobile industry and road travel.

From railroad tickets to their first road map in 1904, to atlases, book publishing, travel stores, and software products, it's interesting to see how Rand McNally strove to evolve with the changing times and their customers' needs.

Sources and more information at the following links:

The Rand McNally Web site
The Rand MacNally timeline
A brief history of Rand McNally
The Encyclopedia of Chicago